Let’s talkTHE SCIENCE BEHIND CHEMIFY
What if making a molecule could be expressed as a program?
Chemputation connects chemical knowledge, executable instructions and the physical world.
01FROM STRUCTURE TO PROCEDURE
A molecular drawing tells you what to make. Chemputation makes the instructions explicit.
Which materials? How much? In what order? At what temperature, and for how long? How is the product separated, purified and measured?
These details become a digital procedure that can be translated for compatible equipment. The experiment connects that procedure with the result.
The original platform paper02A LANGUAGE FOR MAKING
χDL, the Chemical Description Language, describes operations, materials and parameters in a machine-readable form.
Each operation carries the details that make it meaningful: materials, quantities, conditions and sequence.
Explore the χDL standardThe compiler uses an equipment description to translate the procedure into instructions for that system. Execution and measurement connect the instructions to experimental evidence.
Define the chemical task.
Express operations and parameters.
Map to equipment and capabilities.
Run on compatible robotics.
Connect the result to evidence.
03THE EXPERIMENT COMPLETES THE PROGRAM
The procedure and the experimental record belong together. That is how a run becomes knowledge others can build on.
A Chemputer brings chemical operations into a modular robotic system, connecting reaction, work-up, isolation and purification.
The compiler checks the equipment capabilities required by the procedure. The experiment establishes chemical performance.
Sensors and analytical measurements record what happened. Feedback can guide a running procedure and help choose conditions for the next experiment.
Sharing the procedure, conditions and outcome gives the next experiment a stronger starting point.
04FOLLOW THE SCIENCE
A reading trail through the platform, the language, repeatability, feedback, peptide synthesis and the formal foundations.
Science
The programmable synthesis platform
Steiner et al.
Chemical unit operations encoded and executed on a modular robotic platform, demonstrated through three pharmaceutical syntheses.
Science
From literature to executable chemistry
Mehr et al.
A connection between literature procedures, χDL and an equipment description, compiling chemical code into instructions for compatible platforms.
JACS Au
A common foundation for chemical information
Hammer et al.
A perspective on the shared language needed to connect procedures, hardware, analytical results and optimisation.
Science
An executable literature database
Rohrbach et al.
An executable synthesis database, with procedures run on modular Chemputers and automated purification incorporated into the workflow.
Nature Synthesis
Repeatability across laboratories
Rauschen et al.
Shared χDL procedures tested across four hardware systems in two laboratories, connecting a common language with experimental repeatability.
Nature Communications
Chemistry with feedback
Leonov et al.
Process sensors and analytical measurements integrated with dynamic chemical code for responsive execution and reaction optimisation.
Nature Communications
Programmable peptide synthesis
Zero, Tyler & Cronin
Extends χDL-controlled chemputation to solid-phase peptide synthesis, integrating peptide assembly, cleavage, precipitation and chemical modifications in programmable workflows.
PNAS
The formal foundations
Cronin, Pagel & Sharma
A formal framework connecting chemical code, hardware mapping and error correction. Its universality argument depends on extending the available chemistry and keeping each step sufficiently reliable through error correction.
05KEEP EXPLORING
Chemify builds on research into programmable chemistry at the University of Glasgow. Explore the group, the wider literature and the technical foundations.
See Chemify’s technologyThe analytical scene adapts the NMR trace in Figure S43 of Pagel, Jirasek & Cronin, Communications Chemistry 9, 191 (2026) into a 3D visual. Used under CC BY 4.0.
