An informatics infrastructure for combinatorial and high-throughput materials research built on open source code

Laboratory research informatics systems (LRIS) hold great promise in streamlining research generally, and are absolutely necessary for new data-intensive research strategies such as combinatorial and high-throughput (C&HT) approaches. In this paper, we describe a LRIS geared towards C&HT materials research, which is being established in lab facilities at the NIST Combinatorial Method Center (NCMC). The NCMC LRIS system aims to seamlessly integrate the library design, fabrication, measurement and analysis/data-mining aspects of the combi approach into a functional whole geared towards accelerating materials research. Our LRIS system is built upon an open source database management system, and incorporates non-proprietary user/instrument interface and automation software. The NCMC LRIS project endeavours to provide working examples of informatics infrastructure development to those interested in assimilating such tools into their research programmes. Accordingly, this report aims at providing an experiential account of the process by which we designed and implemented the NCMC LRIS.