Nanoprinter turns Meta’s AI predictions into potentially game-changing materials

For the past few months, Meta has been sending recipes to a Dutch scaleup called VSParticle (VSP). These are not food recipes — they’re AI-generated instructions for how to make new nanoporous materials that could potentially supercharge the green transition. 

VSP has so far taken 525 of these recipes and synthesised them into nanomaterials called electrocatalysts. Meta’s algorithms predicted these electrocatalysts would be ideal for breaking down CO2 into useful products like methane or ethanol. VSP brought the machine’s predictions to life using a nanoprinter, a machine which vaporises materials and then deposits them as thin nanoporous films.

Electrocatalysts speed up chemical reactions that involve electricity, such as splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen, converting CO2 into fuels, or generating power in fuel cells. They make these processes more efficient, reducing the energy required and enabling clean energy technologies like hydrogen production and advanced batteries.  

The problem is ...