Ada (self-driving laboratory)

Self-driving laboratory that defined the Pareto front of conductivities and processing temperatures for palladium films via combustion synthesis, including conditions enabling coating of commodity plastics.[9]

Workflow level n/a Source Peer-reviewed source Outcome Author-reported

At a glance

Type

Use case

Workflow level

Workflow unspecified / not applicable

Organisation

University of British Columbia

Year

2022

Disciplines

ChemistryMaterials science

Tasks

Experiment execution / lab automationMaterials discoveryOptimization

Entry updated

2026-10-17

Evidence & verification

Source level

Peer-reviewed source
Grounded in a peer-reviewed publication. This describes the source; it does not mean the reported results have been independently reproduced.

Outcome verification

Author-reported
Outcomes are reported by the team that built the system. The entry is source-checked against the team's own publications; not independently reproduced.

Sources checked

2026-10-16 (UTC)

Authors' own publications (arXiv record fully checked; published version checked at record/abstract level, live 2026-10-16).[9] Performance claims are not independently reproduced.

Source-checked does not mean independently reproduced. See the Method page for how these labels are assigned.

Sources (1)

Research applicability

Getting started

Review the paper (arXiv:2106.08899; published version DOI 10.1038/s41467-022-28580-6) for the system description and operating envelope; no public installation path was verified.

Maintenance

Maintenance status not independently audited.

License

Not independently audited.

Workflow & human oversight

Resource-level classification is intentionally unspecified; instantiated workflows may differ. Humans set objectives and validate results.

Workflow level is not an evidence score; higher is not better evidence.

Approach

Closed-loop robotic experimentation with model-guided decision making over combustion-synthesis conditions for palladium thin films; objectives were conductivity and processing temperature, with discovered conditions tested by spray coating on plastic substrates.[9]

Outcomes (as reported by the originating team)

Author-reported: combustion-synthesis conditions enabling spray-coated uniform palladium films - moderate conductivity (1.1×10^5 S m^-1) at 191 °C; at 226 °C conductivities (2.0×10^6 S m^-1) comparable to sputtered films (2.0-5.8×10^6 S m^-1).

Limitations

Author-reported outcomes; not independently reproduced. The published version was checked at record/abstract level; full text not inspected.

Reproducibility

Live source checks 2026-10-16: arXiv:2106.08899; Nature Communications DOI 10.1038/s41467-022-28580-6. No claimed outcome reproduced.

Adoption requirements

Autonomous-laboratory hardware and software stack; not packaged for third-party adoption in the checked sources.

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