Insights from AI: How Oxygen is Produced on Mars

AI chemists have successfully created a catalyst that produces oxygen from a Martian meteorite.

continue to live with immigration to Mars It has often been used as a theme in science fiction. Before these dreams become a reality, humanity faces significant challenges, including a lack of critical resources such as oxygen needed for long-term survival on Mars. However, recent discoveries about water activity on Mars offer new hope for overcoming these obstacles.

Scientists are currently investigating the possibility of splitting water to produce oxygen through electrochemical water oxidation driven by solar energy with the help of oxygen evolution reaction (OER) catalysts. . The challenge is to find a way to synthesize these catalysts in situ using Martian materials, rather than having to transport them from Earth, which is costly.

Advances in AI and Mars chemistry

To address this problem, a team led by Professor Luo Yi, Professor Jiang Jun, and Professor Shang Weiwei from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) recently made it possible to: Use a robotic artificial intelligence (AI) chemist to automatically synthesize and optimize his OER catalyst from Martian meteorites.

Their research, in collaboration with the Deep Space Exploration Institute, was recently published in the journal. Natural synthesis.

“AI chemists will innovatively synthesize OER catalysts using Martian materials based on interdisciplinary collaboration,” said Professor Luo Yi, the team’s lead scientist.

In each experimental cycle, AI chemists first use laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) as an eye to analyze the elemental composition of Martian ores. The ore is then subjected to a series of pretreatments, including weighing in a solids distribution workstation, preparing a feed solution in a liquid distribution workstation, separating it from the liquid in a centrifugation workstation, and solidifying it in a drying workstation. Masu.

A robotic AI chemist uses a Martian meteorite to create a useful oxygen-producing catalyst.Credit: AI Chemistry Group, University of Science and Technology of China

The resulting metal hydroxide is treated with Nafion adhesive to prepare a working electrode for OER testing in an electrochemical workstation. Test data is sent in real time to the AI ​​chemist’s computational “brain”, machine learning (ML) Processing.

The AI ​​chemist’s “brain” employs quantum chemistry and molecular dynamics simulations on 30,000 high-entropy hydroxides with different elemental ratios and calculates their OER catalytic activity via density functional theory. The simulation data is used to train a neural network model to rapidly predict the activity of catalysts at different elemental compositions.

Finally, through Bayesian optimization, the “brain” predicts the combination of available Martian ores needed to synthesize the optimal OER catalyst.

Achieving breakthrough advances in oxygen production

So far, AI chemists have used five types of Martian meteorites to create successful catalysts under unmanned conditions. This catalyst operates stably for more than 550,000 s at a current density of 10 mA cm.^-2 Overvoltage is 445.1 mV. Further tests at -37 degrees Celsius, the temperature of Mars, confirmed that the catalyst could stably produce oxygen without any obvious degradation.

In less than two months, AI chemists completed a complex optimization of a catalyst that would have taken a human chemist 2000 years.

The team is working on turning AI chemist into a common experimental platform for performing various chemical syntheses without human intervention. The paper’s reviewers praised the paper, saying, “This type of research is of widespread interest and is rapidly progressing in the synthesis and discovery of organic/inorganic materials.”

“In the future, humans will be able to establish oxygen factories on Mars with the help of AI chemists,” Zhang said. It takes just 15 hours of sunlight to produce sufficient oxygen concentrations for human survival. “This breakthrough technology brings us one step closer to realizing our dream of living on Mars,” he said.

Reference: “Automatic synthesis of oxygen production catalyst from Martian meteorite by robot AI chemist” Qing Zhu, Yan Huang, Donglai Zhou, Lyuan Zhao, Lulu Guo, Ruyu Yang, Zixu Sun, Man Luo, Fei Zhang, Hengyu Xiao , Xinsheng Tang, Xchun Zhang, Tao Song, Xiang Li, Baochen Chong, Junyi Zhang, Yihan Zhang, Baicheng Zhang, Jiaqi Cao, Guozhen Zhang, Song Wang, Guilin Ye, Wanjun Zhang, Haitao Zhao, Shuang Cong, Huiron Li, Li – Li Ling, Zhe Zhang, Weiwei Shang, Jun Jiang, Yi Luo, November 13, 2023, natural synthesis.
DOI: 10.1038/s44160-023-00424-1