Autonomous inorganic material synthesis machine

A synthesis machine for preparation of a target inorganic material, comprising:

• a synthesis planner module coupled with a processor that outputs from a synthesis route recommendation computer program:
• at least one solid-state synthetic method for the preparation of the target inorganic material, where the at least one solid-state synthetic method comprises a viable subset of a multiplicity of possible synthetic reactions;
• at least one recommended synthesis from the at least one solid-state method, the at least one recommended synthesis being a synthesis with a calculated nucleation barrier metric and a competition metric that resides at or near an origin of a plot of the nucleation barrier metric versus the competition metric or is on or near a pareto frontier of the plot for the target inorganic material input by a user, and wherein the at least one recommended synthesis is separately input to the synthesis machine for syntheses;
• at least one reaction vessel for containment of at least one reactant for formation of the target inorganic material, wherein each reaction vessel is for the performance of a single recommended synthesis under a first stoichiometry and a first set of conditions contained in the output of the computer program, or as an enumerated stoichiometry and enumerated set of conditions modified according to a result of a previous preparation of the target inorganic material by the synthesis machine, ultimately resulting from the first stoichiometry and a first set of conditions;
• at least one delivery mechanism to provide a plurality of reactants to the reaction vessel, wherein a quantity of each of the plurality of reactants is provided at the first stoichiometry or in the enumerated stoichiometry;
• at least one controller configured for:
• controlling the first set of conditions or the enumerated set of conditions required for the at least one recommended synthesis;
• monitoring the first set of conditions or the enumerated set of conditions during the at least one recommended synthesis;
• and
• evaluating a progress of a reaction of the at least one recommended synthesis.