# chem: choose a molecule from an online 'Spotify' for chemistry and synthesize it with a desktop-sized bot

AA << have found a way to create new sets of instructions for robot chemists by harnessing the power of natural language processing. They developed a computer program called SynthReader to scan through scientific papers and recognize sections which outline procedures for organic and inorganic chemical synthesis. Synthreader automatically breaks those procedures down to simple instructions and stores them in a format the team call Chemical Description Language, or XDL, which is a new open source language for describing chemical and material synthesis. Those XDL files are chemical instructions which can in principle be read any chemical robot in. The team built an easy-to-use interface called ChemIDE to integrate with any robotic chemist system and allow the XDL instructions to be turned into chemicals. The only human input required is ensuring that the equipment the robot needs to make the molecules is set up correctly. >>

'Digital chemistry' breakthrough turns words into molecules. University of Glasgow. Oct 2, 2020. 

https://phys.org/news/2020-10-digital-chemistry-breakthrough-words-molecules.html   

S. Hessam M. Mehr, Matthew Craven, et al. A universal system for digitization and automatic execution of the chemical synthesis literature. Science. Vol. 370, Issue 6512, pp. 101-108. doi: 10.1126/ science.abc2986. Oct 2, 2020.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/370/6512/101