Asahi Kasei will open a new facility, the Smart Laboratory, to automate materials development and run the learning cycle from materials design through experimentation, evaluation and processing. This will increase the number of formulations that can be evaluated to approximately 4x the previous level.
The Smart Laboratory being established will autonomously repeat the cycle from materials design through experimentation, processing and performance evaluation based on customers' manufacturing processes, and feeding the results into the next design. This is its defining feature. Previously, development relied heavily on researchers' experience, and meeting the increasingly complex performance requirements for semiconductors took time.
Materials informatics (MI) will support this accelerated development. Asahi Kasei will use and expand the Paimel materials data platform, integrate data obtained from automated experiments and use it to train AI. By combining AI with human expertise and simulation technologies, the company will explore new combinations of raw materials and seek to achieve a balance between conflicting performance characteristics.
Asahi Kasei positions its electronics business as a future growth driver and has set a target of increasing sales to approximately ¥300 billion in 2030. The Smart Laboratory will provide the technological foundation for this goal. Operations will initially begin with Paimel, before the technology is expanded into other electronic materials fields after expertise has been accumulated.
Over the longer term, the company will consider applying development methods that combine digital and physical technologies across the Group, including in the healthcare and housing businesses. By establishing a structure in which AI and researchers interact to explore unknown areas, the initiative could become a leading example of DX in Japan's materials industry.