Using Scalable Computer Vision to Automate High-throughput Semiconductor Characterization

TL;DR

This paper introduces automated computer vision tools to significantly accelerate the characterization of high-throughput synthesized semiconductors, enabling rapid, accurate property measurements that surpass traditional methods by over 80 times.

Contribution

The authors develop scalable, automated computer vision algorithms for high-throughput material property characterization, including band gap and degradation detection, with high accuracy and speed.

Findings

Achieved 85x increase in characterization throughput.

Autonomous computation of band gap in 6 minutes for 200 samples.

Autonomous degradation measurement in 20 minutes for 200 samples.

Abstract

High-throughput materials synthesis methods have risen in popularity due to their potential to accelerate the design and discovery of novel functional materials, such as solution-processed semiconductors. After synthesis, key material properties must be measured and characterized to validate discovery and provide feedback to optimization cycles. However, with the boom in development of high-throughput synthesis tools that champion production rates up to $10^4$ samples per hour with flexible form factors, most sample characterization methods are either slow (conventional rates of $10^1$ samples per hour, approximately 1000x slower) or rigid (e.g., designed for standard-size microplates), resulting in a bottleneck that impedes the materials-design process. To overcome this challenge, we propose a set of automated material property characterization (autocharacterization) tools that leverage the adaptive, parallelizable, and scalable nature of computer vision to accelerate the throughput of characterization by 85x compared to the non-automated workflow. We demonstrate a generalizable composition mapping tool for high-throughput synthesized binary material systems as well as two scalable autocharacterization algorithms that (1) autonomously compute the band gap of 200 unique compositions in 6 minutes and (2) autonomously compute the degree of degradation in 200 unique compositions in 20 minutes, generating ultra-high compositional resolution trends of band gap and stability. We demonstrate that the developed band gap and degradation detection autocharacterization methods achieve 98.5% accuracy and 96.9% accuracy, respectively, on the FA$_{1-x}$MA$_{x}$PbI$_3$, $0\leq x \leq 1$ perovskite semiconductor system.