Automated and High-Throughput Phase Separation Control for Supramolecular Polymer Blends Enabled by Machine Learning

作者：Yunfei Wang, Daniel Struble, Simant R. Upreti, Zongliang Xie, Ka Hung Chan, Yi Liu, Chenhui Zhu, Paul D. Ashby, Wenjie Xia, Derek L. Patton, Boran Ma, Xiaodan Gu · 发表于：JACS Au · 年份：2026 · DOI：10.1021/jacsau.6c00041 · 被引用次数：1 · 研究领域：Block Copolymer Self-Assembly、Machine Learning in Materials Science、Advanced Polymer Synthesis and Characterization

High Resolution Image Download MS PowerPoint Slide Supramolecular polymer blends (SPBs) offer tunable morphologies that dictate their macroscopic properties, yet their rational design is limited by the absence of predictive structure–morphology models. Here, we introduce a data-driven high-throughput workflow that integrates modular polymer synthesis, robotic formulation, automated morphology characterization, and machine learning (ML) for accelerated SPB discovery. Using a plug-and-play synthetic strategy, 33 hydrogen-bonding end-functional homopolymers were prepared and orthogonally combined to generate 260 SPBs in 1 day. A fully automated atomic force microscopy (AFM) pipeline enabled systematic imaging, producing 2340 morphology data sets with minimal human intervention. Domain spacings were extracted through complementary image-processing methods and used to train ML models. A support vector regression (SVR) model accurately predicted target phase-separation sizes (50, 100, and 150 nm), which were experimentally validated. This work demonstrates the power of coupling high-throughput experimentation with ML to accelerate morphology discovery and provides one of the first large-scale experimental data sets for supramolecular polymer systems.