#memristor

3 months ago

[2024 OPEN ACCESS]
Enhancing large-area Geiger-mode avalanche photodiode performance through dynamic memristor quenching: a study on improving count rate, reducing jitter and mitigating afterpulsing
2024 17 074501

iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3...

#APEX
#Physics
#photodiode
#memristor

1 0 0 0

Cómo una seta shiitake podría ser la memoria barata de tu PC Memoria viva con shiitake: 5.850 señales/s y 90% de acierto; propuesta muy barata de Ohio State para computación neuromórfica, bajo consumo. La respuesta inmediata es clara: todavía no. Ningún ordenad...

4 months ago

[2024 OPEN ACCESS]
Resistive switching properties in polycrystalline LiNbO3 thin films
2024 Appl. Phys. Express 17 054001

iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3...

#APEX
#Physics
#Openaccess
#polycrystalline
#conductivity
#resistive
#switching
#memristor

0 0 0 0

Don Porqué

@donporque.bsky.social

5 months ago

Cómo una seta shiitake podría ser la memoria barata de tu PC

#7denoviembre #felizviernes #Tecnología #Ciencia #Hongos #Shiitake #Memristor #ComputaciónVerde #Neuromórfica #OSU #Micelio #Innovación #Sostenibilidad #Bioelectrónica #EdgeComputing

donporque.com/shiitake-mem...

1 0 0 0

LLMs

@llms.activitypub.awakari.com.ap.brid.gy

5 months ago

The AGI Blueprint: USC Breakthrough Copies Brain, Slashes AI Power Needs Artificial Brain Cells Slash Chip Size and Energy Use, Launching the AGI Race A team of researchers has announced a […] Ar...

#News #AGI #Artificial #General #Intelligence #Artificial […]

[Original post on workinvirtual.com]

0 0 0 0

LLMs

@llms.activitypub.awakari.com.ap.brid.gy

5 months ago

The AGI Blueprint: USC Breakthrough Copies Brain, Slashes AI Power Needs Artificial Brain Cells Slash Chip Size and Energy Use, Launching the AGI Race A team of researchers has announced a […] Ar...

#News #AGI #Artificial #General #Intelligence #Artificial […]

[Original post on workinvirtual.com]

0 0 0 0

International Journal of Extreme Manufacturing

@intjextremmanuf.bsky.social

5 months ago

Presenting a novel Ag/ZnO-SnO2/WO3-x-ITO heterojunction #Memristor and a methodology for implementing & integrating multiple cognitive functions into a single system, which achieves an authentic simulation of biological cognition.

#IJEM #OpenAccess: doi.org/10.1088/2631...

0 0 0 0

Columbus - Feeds

@columbus.tomkahe.com.ap.brid.gy

5 months ago

Mushrooms As Computer Memory Fungi make up a massive, interconnected part of Earth’s ecosystems, yet they’re vastly underrepresented in research and public consciousness compared to plants and animals. That may change in the future though, as a group of researchers at The Ohio State University have found a way to use fungi as organic memristors — hinting at a possible future where fungal networks help power our computing devices. A memristor is a passive electronic component whose resistance changes based on the voltage and current that has passed through it, which means it can effectively remember past electrical states even when power is removed. To create these circuit components with fungus, the researchers grew shiitake and button mushroom mycelium for these tests, dehydrated their samples for a number of days, and then attached electrodes to the samples. After misting them briefly to restore conductivity, the samples were exposed to various electrical wave forms at a range of voltages to determine how effective they were at performing the duties of a memristor. At one volt these systems were the most consistent, and they were even programmed to act like RAM where they achieved a frequency of almost 6 kHz and an accuracy of 90%. In their paper, the research group notes a number of advantages to building fungal-based components like these, namely that they are much more environmentally friendly and don’t require the rare earth metals that typical circuit components do. They’re also easier to grow than other types of neural organoids, require less power, weigh less, and shiitake specifically is notable for its radiation resistance as well. Some work needs to be done to decrease the size required, and with time perhaps we’ll see more fungi-based electrical components like these.

Mushrooms As Computer Memory - Bryan Cockfield

0 0 0 0

Hackaday

@hackaday.com.web.brid.gy

5 months ago

Mushrooms As Computer Memory Fungi make up a massive, interconnected part of Earth’s ecosystems, yet they’re vastly underrepresented in research and public consciousness compared to plants and animals. That may change in the future …read more

0 0 0 0

In a First, Artificial Neurons Talk Directly to Living Cells The bacteria __Geobacter sulfurreducens__ came from humble beginnings; it was first isolated from dirt in a ditch in Norman, Okla. But now, the surprisingly remarkable microbes are the key to the first ever artificial neurons that can directly interact with living cells. The ___G. sulfurreducens_ microbes communicate with one another through tiny, protein-based wires that researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst harvested and used to make artificial neurons. These neurons can, for the first time, process information from living cells without an intermediary device amplifying or modulating the signals, the researchers say. While some artificial neurons already exist, they require electronic amplification to sense the signals our bodies produce, explains Jun Yao, who works on bioelectronics and nanoelectronics at UMass Amherst. The amplification inflates both power usage and circuit complexity, and so counters efficiencies found in the brain. The neuron created by Yao’s team can understand the body’s signals at their natural amplitude of around 0.1 volts. This is “highly novel,” says Bozhi Tian, a biophysicist who studies living bioelectronics at the University of Chicago and was not involved in the work. This work “bridges the long-standing gap between electronic and biological signaling” and demonstrates interaction between artificial neurons and living cells that Tian calls “unprecedented.” ## Real neurons and artificial neurons Biological neurons are the fundamental building blocks of the brain. If external stimuli are strong enough, charge builds up in a neuron, triggering an action potential, a spike of voltage that travels down the neuron’s body to enable all types of bodily functions, including emotion and movement. Scientists have been working to engineer a synthetic neuron for decades, chasing after the efficiency of the human brain, which has so far seemed to escape the abilities of electronics. Yao’s group has designed new artificial neurons that mimic how biological neurons sense and react to electrical signals. They use sensors to monitor external biochemical changes and memristors—essentially resistors with memory—to emulate the action-potential process. As voltage from the external biochemical events increases, ions accumulate and begin to form a filament across a gap in the memristor—which in this case was filled with protein nanowires. If there is enough voltage, the filament completely bridges the gap. Current shoots through the device and the filament then dissolves, dispersing the ions and stopping the current. The complete process mimics a neuron’s action potential. The team tested its artificial neurons by connecting them to cardiac tissue. The devices measured a baseline amount of cellular contraction, which did not produce enough signal to cause the artificial neuron to fire. Then the researchers took another measurement after the tissue was dosed with norepinephrine—a drug that increases how frequently cells contract. The artificial neurons triggered action potentials only during the medicated trial, proving that they can detect changes in living cells. The experimental results were published 29 September in __Nature Communications__. ## Natural nanowires The group has __G. sulfurreducens__ to thank for the breakthrough. The microbes synthesize miniature cables, called protein nanowires, that they use for intraspecies communication. These cables are charge conductors that survive for long periods of time in the wild without decaying. (Remember, they evolved for Oklahoma ditches.) They’re extremely stable, even for device fabrication, Yao says. To the engineers, the most notable property of the nanowires is how efficiently ions move along them. The nanowires offer a low-energy means of transferring charge between human cells and artificial neurons, thus avoiding the need for a separate amplifier or modulator. “And amazingly, the material is designed for this,” says Yao. The group developed a method to shear the cables off bacterial bodies, purifying the material and suspending it in a solution. The team laid the mixture out and let the water evaporate, leaving a one-molecule-thin film made from the protein nanowire material. This efficiency allows the artificial neuron to yield huge power savings. Yao’s group integrated the film into the memristor at the core of the neuron, lowering the energy barrier for the reaction that causes the memristor to respond to signals recognized by the sensor. With this innovation, the researchers say, the artificial neuron uses one-tenth the voltage and 1/100 the power of other artificial neurons. Chicago’s Tian thinks this “extremely impressive” energy efficiency is “essential for future low-power, implantable, and biointegrated computing systems.” The power advantages make this synthetic-neuron design attractive for all kinds of applications, the researchers say. Responsive wearable electronics, like prosthetics that adapt to stimuli from the body, could make use of these new artificial neurons, Tian says. Eventually, implantable systems that rely on the neurons could “learn like living tissues, advancing personalized medicine and brain-inspired computing” to “interpret physiological states, leading to biohybrid networks that merge electronics with living intelligence,” he says. The artificial neurons could also be useful in electronics outside the biomedical field. Millions of them on a chip could replace transistors, completing the same tasks while decreasing power usage, Yao says. The fabrication process for the neurons does not involve high temperatures and utilizes the same kind of photolithography that silicon chip manufacturers do, he says. Yao does, however, point out two possible bottlenecks producers could face when scaling up these artificial neurons for electronics. The first is obtaining more of the protein nanowires from __G. sulfurreducens__. His lab currently works for three days to generate only 100 micrograms of material—about the mass of one grain of table salt. And that amount can coat only a very small device, so Yao questions how this step in the process could scale up for production. His other concern is how to achieve a uniform coating of the film at the scale of a silicon wafer. “If you wanted to make high-density small devices, the uniformity of film thickness actually is a critical parameter,” he explains. But the artificial neurons his group has developed are too small to do any meaningful uniformity testing for now. Tian doesn’t expect artificial neurons to replace silicon transistors in conventional computing, but instead sees them as a parallel offering for “hybrid chips that merge biological adaptability with electronic precision,” he says. In the far future, Yao hopes that such bioderived devices will also be appreciated for not contributing to e-waste. When a user no longer wants a device, they can simply dump the biological component in the surrounding environment, Yao says, because it won’t cause an environmental hazard. “By using this kind of nature-derived, microbial material, we can create a greener technology that’s more sustainable for the world,” Yao says.

5 months ago

0 0 0 0

In a First, Artificial Neurons Talk Directly to Living Cells The bacteria __Geobacter sulfurreducens__ came from humble beginnings; it was first isolated from dirt in a ditch in Norman, Okla. But now, the surprisingly remarkable microbes are the key to the first ever artificial neurons that can directly interact with living cells. The ___G. sulfurreducens_ microbes communicate with one another through tiny, protein-based wires that researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst harvested and used to make artificial neurons. These neurons can, for the first time, process information from living cells without an intermediary device amplifying or modulating the signals, the researchers say. While some artificial neurons already exist, they require electronic amplification to sense the signals our bodies produce, explains Jun Yao, who works on bioelectronics and nanoelectronics at UMass Amherst. The amplification inflates both power usage and circuit complexity, and so counters efficiencies found in the brain. The neuron created by Yao’s team can understand the body’s signals at their natural amplitude of around 0.1 volts. This is “highly novel,” says Bozhi Tian, a biophysicist who studies living bioelectronics at the University of Chicago and was not involved in the work. This work “bridges the long-standing gap between electronic and biological signaling” and demonstrates interaction between artificial neurons and living cells that Tian calls “unprecedented.” ## Real neurons and artificial neurons Biological neurons are the fundamental building blocks of the brain. If external stimuli are strong enough, charge builds up in a neuron, triggering an action potential, a spike of voltage that travels down the neuron’s body to enable all types of bodily functions, including emotion and movement. Scientists have been working to engineer a synthetic neuron for decades, chasing after the efficiency of the human brain, which has so far seemed to escape the abilities of electronics. Yao’s group has designed new artificial neurons that mimic how biological neurons sense and react to electrical signals. They use sensors to monitor external biochemical changes and memristors—essentially resistors with memory—to emulate the action-potential process. As voltage from the external biochemical events increases, ions accumulate and begin to form a filament across a gap in the memristor—which in this case was filled with protein nanowires. If there is enough voltage, the filament completely bridges the gap. Current shoots through the device and the filament then dissolves, dispersing the ions and stopping the current. The complete process mimics a neuron’s action potential. The team tested its artificial neurons by connecting them to cardiac tissue. The devices measured a baseline amount of cellular contraction, which did not produce enough signal to cause the artificial neuron to fire. Then the researchers took another measurement after the tissue was dosed with norepinephrine—a drug that increases how frequently cells contract. The artificial neurons triggered action potentials only during the medicated trial, proving that they can detect changes in living cells. The experimental results were published 29 September in __Nature Communications__. ## Natural nanowires The group has __G. sulfurreducens__ to thank for the breakthrough. The microbes synthesize miniature cables, called protein nanowires, that they use for intraspecies communication. These cables are charge conductors that survive for long periods of time in the wild without decaying. (Remember, they evolved for Oklahoma ditches.) They’re extremely stable, even for device fabrication, Yao says. To the engineers, the most notable property of the nanowires is how efficiently ions move along them. The nanowires offer a low-energy means of transferring charge between human cells and artificial neurons, thus avoiding the need for a separate amplifier or modulator. “And amazingly, the material is designed for this,” says Yao. The group developed a method to shear the cables off bacterial bodies, purifying the material and suspending it in a solution. The team laid the mixture out and let the water evaporate, leaving a one-molecule-thin film made from the protein nanowire material. This efficiency allows the artificial neuron to yield huge power savings. Yao’s group integrated the film into the memristor at the core of the neuron, lowering the energy barrier for the reaction that causes the memristor to respond to signals recognized by the sensor. With this innovation, the researchers say, the artificial neuron uses one-tenth the voltage and 1/100 the power of other artificial neurons. Chicago’s Tian thinks this “extremely impressive” energy efficiency is “essential for future low-power, implantable, and biointegrated computing systems.” The power advantages make this synthetic-neuron design attractive for all kinds of applications, the researchers say. Responsive wearable electronics, like prosthetics that adapt to stimuli from the body, could make use of these new artificial neurons, Tian says. Eventually, implantable systems that rely on the neurons could “learn like living tissues, advancing personalized medicine and brain-inspired computing” to “interpret physiological states, leading to biohybrid networks that merge electronics with living intelligence,” he says. The artificial neurons could also be useful in electronics outside the biomedical field. Millions of them on a chip could replace transistors, completing the same tasks while decreasing power usage, Yao says. The fabrication process for the neurons does not involve high temperatures and utilizes the same kind of photolithography that silicon chip manufacturers do, he says. Yao does, however, point out two possible bottlenecks producers could face when scaling up these artificial neurons for electronics. The first is obtaining more of the protein nanowires from __G. sulfurreducens__. His lab currently works for three days to generate only 100 micrograms of material—about the mass of one grain of table salt. And that amount can coat only a very small device, so Yao questions how this step in the process could scale up for production. His other concern is how to achieve a uniform coating of the film at the scale of a silicon wafer. “If you wanted to make high-density small devices, the uniformity of film thickness actually is a critical parameter,” he explains. But the artificial neurons his group has developed are too small to do any meaningful uniformity testing for now. Tian doesn’t expect artificial neurons to replace silicon transistors in conventional computing, but instead sees them as a parallel offering for “hybrid chips that merge biological adaptability with electronic precision,” he says. In the far future, Yao hopes that such bioderived devices will also be appreciated for not contributing to e-waste. When a user no longer wants a device, they can simply dump the biological component in the surrounding environment, Yao says, because it won’t cause an environmental hazard. “By using this kind of nature-derived, microbial material, we can create a greener technology that’s more sustainable for the world,” Yao says.

5 months ago

0 0 0 0

In a First, Artificial Neurons Talk Directly to Living Cells The bacteria __Geobacter sulfurreducens__ came from humble beginnings; it was first isolated from dirt in a ditch in Norman, Okla. But now, the surprisingly remarkable microbes are the key to the first ever artificial neurons that can directly interact with living cells. The ___G. sulfurreducens_ microbes communicate with one another through tiny, protein-based wires that researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst harvested and used to make artificial neurons. These neurons can, for the first time, process information from living cells without an intermediary device amplifying or modulating the signals, the researchers say. While some artificial neurons already exist, they require electronic amplification to sense the signals our bodies produce, explains Jun Yao, who works on bioelectronics and nanoelectronics at UMass Amherst. The amplification inflates both power usage and circuit complexity, and so counters efficiencies found in the brain. The neuron created by Yao’s team can understand the body’s signals at their natural amplitude of around 0.1 volts. This is “highly novel,” says Bozhi Tian, a biophysicist who studies living bioelectronics at the University of Chicago and was not involved in the work. This work “bridges the long-standing gap between electronic and biological signaling” and demonstrates interaction between artificial neurons and living cells that Tian calls “unprecedented.” ## Real neurons and artificial neurons Biological neurons are the fundamental building blocks of the brain. If external stimuli are strong enough, charge builds up in a neuron, triggering an action potential, a spike of voltage that travels down the neuron’s body to enable all types of bodily functions, including emotion and movement. Scientists have been working to engineer a synthetic neuron for decades, chasing after the efficiency of the human brain, which has so far seemed to escape the abilities of electronics. Yao’s group has designed new artificial neurons that mimic how biological neurons sense and react to electrical signals. They use sensors to monitor external biochemical changes and memristors—essentially resistors with memory—to emulate the action-potential process. As voltage from the external biochemical events increases, ions accumulate and begin to form a filament across a gap in the memristor—which in this case was filled with protein nanowires. If there is enough voltage, the filament completely bridges the gap. Current shoots through the device and the filament then dissolves, dispersing the ions and stopping the current. The complete process mimics a neuron’s action potential. The team tested its artificial neurons by connecting them to cardiac tissue. The devices measured a baseline amount of cellular contraction, which did not produce enough signal to cause the artificial neuron to fire. Then the researchers took another measurement after the tissue was dosed with norepinephrine—a drug that increases how frequently cells contract. The artificial neurons triggered action potentials only during the medicated trial, proving that they can detect changes in living cells. The experimental results were published 29 September in __Nature Communications__. ## Natural nanowires The group has __G. sulfurreducens__ to thank for the breakthrough. The microbes synthesize miniature cables, called protein nanowires, that they use for intraspecies communication. These cables are charge conductors that survive for long periods of time in the wild without decaying. (Remember, they evolved for Oklahoma ditches.) They’re extremely stable, even for device fabrication, Yao says. To the engineers, the most notable property of the nanowires is how efficiently ions move along them. The nanowires offer a low-energy means of transferring charge between human cells and artificial neurons, thus avoiding the need for a separate amplifier or modulator. “And amazingly, the material is designed for this,” says Yao. The group developed a method to shear the cables off bacterial bodies, purifying the material and suspending it in a solution. The team laid the mixture out and let the water evaporate, leaving a one-molecule-thin film made from the protein nanowire material. This efficiency allows the artificial neuron to yield huge power savings. Yao’s group integrated the film into the memristor at the core of the neuron, lowering the energy barrier for the reaction that causes the memristor to respond to signals recognized by the sensor. With this innovation, the researchers say, the artificial neuron uses one-tenth the voltage and 1/100 the power of other artificial neurons. Chicago’s Tian thinks this “extremely impressive” energy efficiency is “essential for future low-power, implantable, and biointegrated computing systems.” The power advantages make this synthetic-neuron design attractive for all kinds of applications, the researchers say. Responsive wearable electronics, like prosthetics that adapt to stimuli from the body, could make use of these new artificial neurons, Tian says. Eventually, implantable systems that rely on the neurons could “learn like living tissues, advancing personalized medicine and brain-inspired computing” to “interpret physiological states, leading to biohybrid networks that merge electronics with living intelligence,” he says. The artificial neurons could also be useful in electronics outside the biomedical field. Millions of them on a chip could replace transistors, completing the same tasks while decreasing power usage, Yao says. The fabrication process for the neurons does not involve high temperatures and utilizes the same kind of photolithography that silicon chip manufacturers do, he says. Yao does, however, point out two possible bottlenecks producers could face when scaling up these artificial neurons for electronics. The first is obtaining more of the protein nanowires from __G. sulfurreducens__. His lab currently works for three days to generate only 100 micrograms of material—about the mass of one grain of table salt. And that amount can coat only a very small device, so Yao questions how this step in the process could scale up for production. His other concern is how to achieve a uniform coating of the film at the scale of a silicon wafer. “If you wanted to make high-density small devices, the uniformity of film thickness actually is a critical parameter,” he explains. But the artificial neurons his group has developed are too small to do any meaningful uniformity testing for now. Tian doesn’t expect artificial neurons to replace silicon transistors in conventional computing, but instead sees them as a parallel offering for “hybrid chips that merge biological adaptability with electronic precision,” he says. In the far future, Yao hopes that such bioderived devices will also be appreciated for not contributing to e-waste. When a user no longer wants a device, they can simply dump the biological component in the surrounding environment, Yao says, because it won’t cause an environmental hazard. “By using this kind of nature-derived, microbial material, we can create a greener technology that’s more sustainable for the world,” Yao says.

5 months ago

0 0 0 0

Artificial Neurons Talk Directly to Living Cells in a First The bacteria __Geobacter sulfurreducens__ came from humble beginnings; it was first isolated from dirt in a ditch in Norman, Oklahoma. But now, the surprisingly remarkable microbes are the key to the first ever artificial neurons that can directly interact with living cells. __G. sulfurreducens__ communicate with each other through tiny, protein-based wires that researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have harvested and used to make artificial neurons that can, for the first time, process information from living cells without an intermediary device amplifying or modulating the signals, the researchers say. While some artificial neurons already exist, they require electronic amplification to sense the signals our bodies produce, explains Jun Yao, who works on bioelectronics and nanoelectronics at UMass Amherst. The amplification inflates both power usage and circuit complexity, and so counters efficiencies found in the brain. Yao’s team’s neuron can understand the body’s signals at their natural amplitude of around 0.1 volts. This “is highly novel,” says Bozhi Tian, a biophysicist who studies living bioelectronics at The University of Chicago and was not involved in the work. This work “bridges the long-standing gap between electronic and biological signaling” and demonstrates interaction between artificial neurons and living cells that Tian calls “unprecedented.” ## Real neurons and artificial neurons Biological neurons are the fundamental building blocks of the brain. If external stimuli are strong enough, charge builds up in a neuron, triggering an action potential, a spike of voltage that travels down the neuron’s body to enable all types of bodily functions, including emotion and movement. Scientists have been working to engineer a synthetic neuron for decades, chasing after the efficiency of the human brain, which have so far seemed to escape the abilities of electronics. Yao’s group has designed new artificial neurons that mimic how biological neurons sense and react to electrical signals. They use sensors to monitor external biochemical changes and memristors—essentially resistors with memory—to emulate the action potential process. As voltage from the external biochemical events increases, ions accumulate and begin to form a filament across a gap in the memristor—which in this case was filled with protein nanowires. If there is enough voltage, the filament completely bridges the gap. Current shoots through the device, and the filament then dissolves, dispersing the ions and stopping the current. The complete process mimics a neuron’s action potential. The team tested its artificial neurons by connecting them to cardiac tissue. The devices measured a baseline amount of cellular contraction, which did not produce enough signal to cause the artificial neuron to fire. Then the researchers took another measurement after the tissue was dosed with norepinephrine—a drug that increases how frequently cells contract. The artificial neurons only triggered action potentials during the higher, medicated trial, proving that they can detect changes in living cells. The experimental results were published 29 September in __Nature Communications__. ## Natural nanowires The group has __G. sulfurreducens__ to thank for the breakthrough. The microbes synthesize miniature cables, called protein nanowires, that they use for intraspecies communication. These cables are charge conductors that survive for long periods of time in the wild without decaying. (Remember, they evolved for Oklahoma ditches.) They’re extremely stable, even for device fabrication, Yao says. To the engineers, the most notable property of the nanowires is how efficiently ions move along them. The nanowires offered a low energy means of transferring charge between human cells and artificial neurons, thus avoiding the need for a separate amplifier or modulator. “And amazingly, the material is designed for this,” says Yao. The group developed a method to shear the cables off of bacterial bodies, purifying the material and suspending it in a solution. They lay the mixture out and let the water evaporate, leaving a one-molecule-thin film made from the protein nanowire material. This efficiency allows the artificial neuron to yield huge power savings. Yao’s group integrated the film into the memristor at the core of the neuron, lowering the energy barrier for the reaction that causes the memristor to respond to signals recognized by the sensor. With this innovation, the researchers say, the artificial neuron uses 1/10th the voltage and 1/100th the power of others. Chicago’s Tian thinks this “extremely impressive” energy efficiency is “essential for future low-power, implantable, and biointegrated computing systems.” The power advantages make this synthetic neuron design attractive for all kinds of applications, researchers say. Responsive wearable electronics, like prosthetics that adapt to stimuli from the body, could make use of these new artificial neurons, Tian says. Eventually, implantable systems that rely on the neurons could “learn like living tissues, advancing personalized medicine and brain-inspired computing” to “interpret physiological states, leading to biohybrid networks that merge electronics with living intelligence,” he says. The artificial neurons could also be useful in electronics outside the biomedical field. Millions of them on a chip could replace transistors, completing the same tasks while decreasing power usage, Yao says. The fabrication process for the neurons does not involve high temperatures and utilizes the same kind of photolithography silicon chip manufacturers do, he says. Yao does, however, point out two possible bottlenecks producers could face when scaling up these artificial neurons for electronics. The first is obtaining more of the protein nanowires from __G. sulfurreducens__. His lab currently works for three days to generate only 100 micrograms of material—that’s about the mass of one grain of table salt. And that amount can only coat a very small device, so Yao questions how this step in the process could scale up for production. His other concern is how to achieve a uniform coating of the film at the scale of a silicon wafer. “If you wanted to make high-density, small devices, the uniformity of film thickness actually is a critical parameter,” he explains. But the artificial neurons his group has developed are too small to do any meaningful uniformity testing for now. Tian doesn’t expect artificial neurons to replace silicon transistors in conventional computing, but instead sees them as a parallel offering for “hybrid chips that merge biological adaptability with electronic precision,” he says. In the far future, Yao hopes that such bio-derived devices will also be appreciated for not contributing to e-waste. When a user no longer wants a device, they can simply dump the biological component in the surrounding environment, Yao says, because it won’t cause an environmental hazard. “By using this kind of nature-derived, microbial material, we can create a greener technology that’s more sustainable for the world,” Yao says.

5 months ago

0 0 0 0

In a First, Artificial Neurons Talk Directly to Living Cells The bacteria __Geobacter sulfurreducens__ came from humble beginnings; it was first isolated from dirt in a ditch in Norman, Okla. But now, the surprisingly remarkable microbes are the key to the first ever artificial neurons that can directly interact with living cells. The ___G. sulfurreducens_ microbes communicate with one another through tiny, protein-based wires that researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst harvested and used to make artificial neurons. These neurons can, for the first time, process information from living cells without an intermediary device amplifying or modulating the signals, the researchers say. While some artificial neurons already exist, they require electronic amplification to sense the signals our bodies produce, explains Jun Yao, who works on bioelectronics and nanoelectronics at UMass Amherst. The amplification inflates both power usage and circuit complexity, and so counters efficiencies found in the brain. The neuron created by Yao’s team can understand the body’s signals at their natural amplitude of around 0.1 volts. This is “highly novel,” says Bozhi Tian, a biophysicist who studies living bioelectronics at the University of Chicago and was not involved in the work. This work “bridges the long-standing gap between electronic and biological signaling” and demonstrates interaction between artificial neurons and living cells that Tian calls “unprecedented.” ## Real neurons and artificial neurons Biological neurons are the fundamental building blocks of the brain. If external stimuli are strong enough, charge builds up in a neuron, triggering an action potential, a spike of voltage that travels down the neuron’s body to enable all types of bodily functions, including emotion and movement. Scientists have been working to engineer a synthetic neuron for decades, chasing after the efficiency of the human brain, which has so far seemed to escape the abilities of electronics. Yao’s group has designed new artificial neurons that mimic how biological neurons sense and react to electrical signals. They use sensors to monitor external biochemical changes and memristors—essentially resistors with memory—to emulate the action-potential process. As voltage from the external biochemical events increases, ions accumulate and begin to form a filament across a gap in the memristor—which in this case was filled with protein nanowires. If there is enough voltage, the filament completely bridges the gap. Current shoots through the device and the filament then dissolves, dispersing the ions and stopping the current. The complete process mimics a neuron’s action potential. The team tested its artificial neurons by connecting them to cardiac tissue. The devices measured a baseline amount of cellular contraction, which did not produce enough signal to cause the artificial neuron to fire. Then the researchers took another measurement after the tissue was dosed with norepinephrine—a drug that increases how frequently cells contract. The artificial neurons triggered action potentials only during the medicated trial, proving that they can detect changes in living cells. The experimental results were published 29 September in __Nature Communications__. ## Natural nanowires The group has __G. sulfurreducens__ to thank for the breakthrough. The microbes synthesize miniature cables, called protein nanowires, that they use for intraspecies communication. These cables are charge conductors that survive for long periods of time in the wild without decaying. (Remember, they evolved for Oklahoma ditches.) They’re extremely stable, even for device fabrication, Yao says. To the engineers, the most notable property of the nanowires is how efficiently ions move along them. The nanowires offer a low-energy means of transferring charge between human cells and artificial neurons, thus avoiding the need for a separate amplifier or modulator. “And amazingly, the material is designed for this,” says Yao. The group developed a method to shear the cables off bacterial bodies, purifying the material and suspending it in a solution. The team laid the mixture out and let the water evaporate, leaving a one-molecule-thin film made from the protein nanowire material. This efficiency allows the artificial neuron to yield huge power savings. Yao’s group integrated the film into the memristor at the core of the neuron, lowering the energy barrier for the reaction that causes the memristor to respond to signals recognized by the sensor. With this innovation, the researchers say, the artificial neuron uses one-tenth the voltage and 1/100 the power of other artificial neurons. Chicago’s Tian thinks this “extremely impressive” energy efficiency is “essential for future low-power, implantable, and biointegrated computing systems.” The power advantages make this synthetic-neuron design attractive for all kinds of applications, the researchers say. Responsive wearable electronics, like prosthetics that adapt to stimuli from the body, could make use of these new artificial neurons, Tian says. Eventually, implantable systems that rely on the neurons could “learn like living tissues, advancing personalized medicine and brain-inspired computing” to “interpret physiological states, leading to biohybrid networks that merge electronics with living intelligence,” he says. The artificial neurons could also be useful in electronics outside the biomedical field. Millions of them on a chip could replace transistors, completing the same tasks while decreasing power usage, Yao says. The fabrication process for the neurons does not involve high temperatures and utilizes the same kind of photolithography that silicon chip manufacturers do, he says. Yao does, however, point out two possible bottlenecks producers could face when scaling up these artificial neurons for electronics. The first is obtaining more of the protein nanowires from __G. sulfurreducens__. His lab currently works for three days to generate only 100 micrograms of material—about the mass of one grain of table salt. And that amount can coat only a very small device, so Yao questions how this step in the process could scale up for production. His other concern is how to achieve a uniform coating of the film at the scale of a silicon wafer. “If you wanted to make high-density small devices, the uniformity of film thickness actually is a critical parameter,” he explains. But the artificial neurons his group has developed are too small to do any meaningful uniformity testing for now. Tian doesn’t expect artificial neurons to replace silicon transistors in conventional computing, but instead sees them as a parallel offering for “hybrid chips that merge biological adaptability with electronic precision,” he says. In the far future, Yao hopes that such bioderived devices will also be appreciated for not contributing to e-waste. When a user no longer wants a device, they can simply dump the biological component in the surrounding environment, Yao says, because it won’t cause an environmental hazard. “By using this kind of nature-derived, microbial material, we can create a greener technology that’s more sustainable for the world,” Yao says.

5 months ago

0 0 0 0

In a First, Artificial Neurons Talk Directly to Living Cells The bacteria __Geobacter sulfurreducens__ came from humble beginnings; it was first isolated from dirt in a ditch in Norman, Okla. But now, the surprisingly remarkable microbes are the key to the first ever artificial neurons that can directly interact with living cells. The ___G. sulfurreducens_ microbes communicate with one another through tiny, protein-based wires that researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst harvested and used to make artificial neurons. These neurons can, for the first time, process information from living cells without an intermediary device amplifying or modulating the signals, the researchers say. While some artificial neurons already exist, they require electronic amplification to sense the signals our bodies produce, explains Jun Yao, who works on bioelectronics and nanoelectronics at UMass Amherst. The amplification inflates both power usage and circuit complexity, and so counters efficiencies found in the brain. The neuron created by Yao’s team can understand the body’s signals at their natural amplitude of around 0.1 volts. This is “highly novel,” says Bozhi Tian, a biophysicist who studies living bioelectronics at the University of Chicago and was not involved in the work. This work “bridges the long-standing gap between electronic and biological signaling” and demonstrates interaction between artificial neurons and living cells that Tian calls “unprecedented.” ## Real neurons and artificial neurons Biological neurons are the fundamental building blocks of the brain. If external stimuli are strong enough, charge builds up in a neuron, triggering an action potential, a spike of voltage that travels down the neuron’s body to enable all types of bodily functions, including emotion and movement. Scientists have been working to engineer a synthetic neuron for decades, chasing after the efficiency of the human brain, which has so far seemed to escape the abilities of electronics. Yao’s group has designed new artificial neurons that mimic how biological neurons sense and react to electrical signals. They use sensors to monitor external biochemical changes and memristors—essentially resistors with memory—to emulate the action-potential process. As voltage from the external biochemical events increases, ions accumulate and begin to form a filament across a gap in the memristor—which in this case was filled with protein nanowires. If there is enough voltage, the filament completely bridges the gap. Current shoots through the device and the filament then dissolves, dispersing the ions and stopping the current. The complete process mimics a neuron’s action potential. The team tested its artificial neurons by connecting them to cardiac tissue. The devices measured a baseline amount of cellular contraction, which did not produce enough signal to cause the artificial neuron to fire. Then the researchers took another measurement after the tissue was dosed with norepinephrine—a drug that increases how frequently cells contract. The artificial neurons triggered action potentials only during the medicated trial, proving that they can detect changes in living cells. The experimental results were published 29 September in __Nature Communications__. ## Natural nanowires The group has __G. sulfurreducens__ to thank for the breakthrough. The microbes synthesize miniature cables, called protein nanowires, that they use for intraspecies communication. These cables are charge conductors that survive for long periods of time in the wild without decaying. (Remember, they evolved for Oklahoma ditches.) They’re extremely stable, even for device fabrication, Yao says. To the engineers, the most notable property of the nanowires is how efficiently ions move along them. The nanowires offer a low-energy means of transferring charge between human cells and artificial neurons, thus avoiding the need for a separate amplifier or modulator. “And amazingly, the material is designed for this,” says Yao. The group developed a method to shear the cables off bacterial bodies, purifying the material and suspending it in a solution. The team laid the mixture out and let the water evaporate, leaving a one-molecule-thin film made from the protein nanowire material. This efficiency allows the artificial neuron to yield huge power savings. Yao’s group integrated the film into the memristor at the core of the neuron, lowering the energy barrier for the reaction that causes the memristor to respond to signals recognized by the sensor. With this innovation, the researchers say, the artificial neuron uses one-tenth the voltage and 1/100 the power of other artificial neurons. Chicago’s Tian thinks this “extremely impressive” energy efficiency is “essential for future low-power, implantable, and biointegrated computing systems.” The power advantages make this synthetic-neuron design attractive for all kinds of applications, the researchers say. Responsive wearable electronics, like prosthetics that adapt to stimuli from the body, could make use of these new artificial neurons, Tian says. Eventually, implantable systems that rely on the neurons could “learn like living tissues, advancing personalized medicine and brain-inspired computing” to “interpret physiological states, leading to biohybrid networks that merge electronics with living intelligence,” he says. The artificial neurons could also be useful in electronics outside the biomedical field. Millions of them on a chip could replace transistors, completing the same tasks while decreasing power usage, Yao says. The fabrication process for the neurons does not involve high temperatures and utilizes the same kind of photolithography that silicon chip manufacturers do, he says. Yao does, however, point out two possible bottlenecks producers could face when scaling up these artificial neurons for electronics. The first is obtaining more of the protein nanowires from __G. sulfurreducens__. His lab currently works for three days to generate only 100 micrograms of material—about the mass of one grain of table salt. And that amount can coat only a very small device, so Yao questions how this step in the process could scale up for production. His other concern is how to achieve a uniform coating of the film at the scale of a silicon wafer. “If you wanted to make high-density small devices, the uniformity of film thickness actually is a critical parameter,” he explains. But the artificial neurons his group has developed are too small to do any meaningful uniformity testing for now. Tian doesn’t expect artificial neurons to replace silicon transistors in conventional computing, but instead sees them as a parallel offering for “hybrid chips that merge biological adaptability with electronic precision,” he says. In the far future, Yao hopes that such bioderived devices will also be appreciated for not contributing to e-waste. When a user no longer wants a device, they can simply dump the biological component in the surrounding environment, Yao says, because it won’t cause an environmental hazard. “By using this kind of nature-derived, microbial material, we can create a greener technology that’s more sustainable for the world,” Yao says.

5 months ago

0 0 0 0

In a First, Artificial Neurons Talk Directly to Living Cells The bacteria __Geobacter sulfurreducens__ came from humble beginnings; it was first isolated from dirt in a ditch in Norman, Okla. But now, the surprisingly remarkable microbes are the key to the first ever artificial neurons that can directly interact with living cells. The ___G. sulfurreducens_ microbes communicate with one another through tiny, protein-based wires that researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst harvested and used to make artificial neurons. These neurons can, for the first time, process information from living cells without an intermediary device amplifying or modulating the signals, the researchers say. While some artificial neurons already exist, they require electronic amplification to sense the signals our bodies produce, explains Jun Yao, who works on bioelectronics and nanoelectronics at UMass Amherst. The amplification inflates both power usage and circuit complexity, and so counters efficiencies found in the brain. The neuron created by Yao’s team can understand the body’s signals at their natural amplitude of around 0.1 volts. This is “highly novel,” says Bozhi Tian, a biophysicist who studies living bioelectronics at the University of Chicago and was not involved in the work. This work “bridges the long-standing gap between electronic and biological signaling” and demonstrates interaction between artificial neurons and living cells that Tian calls “unprecedented.” ## Real neurons and artificial neurons Biological neurons are the fundamental building blocks of the brain. If external stimuli are strong enough, charge builds up in a neuron, triggering an action potential, a spike of voltage that travels down the neuron’s body to enable all types of bodily functions, including emotion and movement. Scientists have been working to engineer a synthetic neuron for decades, chasing after the efficiency of the human brain, which has so far seemed to escape the abilities of electronics. Yao’s group has designed new artificial neurons that mimic how biological neurons sense and react to electrical signals. They use sensors to monitor external biochemical changes and memristors—essentially resistors with memory—to emulate the action-potential process. As voltage from the external biochemical events increases, ions accumulate and begin to form a filament across a gap in the memristor—which in this case was filled with protein nanowires. If there is enough voltage, the filament completely bridges the gap. Current shoots through the device and the filament then dissolves, dispersing the ions and stopping the current. The complete process mimics a neuron’s action potential. The team tested its artificial neurons by connecting them to cardiac tissue. The devices measured a baseline amount of cellular contraction, which did not produce enough signal to cause the artificial neuron to fire. Then the researchers took another measurement after the tissue was dosed with norepinephrine—a drug that increases how frequently cells contract. The artificial neurons triggered action potentials only during the medicated trial, proving that they can detect changes in living cells. The experimental results were published 29 September in __Nature Communications__. ## Natural nanowires The group has __G. sulfurreducens__ to thank for the breakthrough. The microbes synthesize miniature cables, called protein nanowires, that they use for intraspecies communication. These cables are charge conductors that survive for long periods of time in the wild without decaying. (Remember, they evolved for Oklahoma ditches.) They’re extremely stable, even for device fabrication, Yao says. To the engineers, the most notable property of the nanowires is how efficiently ions move along them. The nanowires offer a low-energy means of transferring charge between human cells and artificial neurons, thus avoiding the need for a separate amplifier or modulator. “And amazingly, the material is designed for this,” says Yao. The group developed a method to shear the cables off bacterial bodies, purifying the material and suspending it in a solution. The team laid the mixture out and let the water evaporate, leaving a one-molecule-thin film made from the protein nanowire material. This efficiency allows the artificial neuron to yield huge power savings. Yao’s group integrated the film into the memristor at the core of the neuron, lowering the energy barrier for the reaction that causes the memristor to respond to signals recognized by the sensor. With this innovation, the researchers say, the artificial neuron uses one-tenth the voltage and 1/100 the power of other artificial neurons. Chicago’s Tian thinks this “extremely impressive” energy efficiency is “essential for future low-power, implantable, and biointegrated computing systems.” The power advantages make this synthetic-neuron design attractive for all kinds of applications, the researchers say. Responsive wearable electronics, like prosthetics that adapt to stimuli from the body, could make use of these new artificial neurons, Tian says. Eventually, implantable systems that rely on the neurons could “learn like living tissues, advancing personalized medicine and brain-inspired computing” to “interpret physiological states, leading to biohybrid networks that merge electronics with living intelligence,” he says. The artificial neurons could also be useful in electronics outside the biomedical field. Millions of them on a chip could replace transistors, completing the same tasks while decreasing power usage, Yao says. The fabrication process for the neurons does not involve high temperatures and utilizes the same kind of photolithography that silicon chip manufacturers do, he says. Yao does, however, point out two possible bottlenecks producers could face when scaling up these artificial neurons for electronics. The first is obtaining more of the protein nanowires from __G. sulfurreducens__. His lab currently works for three days to generate only 100 micrograms of material—about the mass of one grain of table salt. And that amount can coat only a very small device, so Yao questions how this step in the process could scale up for production. His other concern is how to achieve a uniform coating of the film at the scale of a silicon wafer. “If you wanted to make high-density small devices, the uniformity of film thickness actually is a critical parameter,” he explains. But the artificial neurons his group has developed are too small to do any meaningful uniformity testing for now. Tian doesn’t expect artificial neurons to replace silicon transistors in conventional computing, but instead sees them as a parallel offering for “hybrid chips that merge biological adaptability with electronic precision,” he says. In the far future, Yao hopes that such bioderived devices will also be appreciated for not contributing to e-waste. When a user no longer wants a device, they can simply dump the biological component in the surrounding environment, Yao says, because it won’t cause an environmental hazard. “By using this kind of nature-derived, microbial material, we can create a greener technology that’s more sustainable for the world,” Yao says.

5 months ago

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5 months ago

0 0 0 0

5 months ago

Simulation of 2D memristive devices with ohmic and Schottky contacts

Researchers simulate 2D memristive devices with both ohmic and Schottky contacts, analyzing their behavior in nanoscale circuits and their potential for low-power memory. Read more: getnews.me/simulation-of-2d-memrist... #memristor #nanotech

0 0 0 0

6 months ago

Residual learning enables analog AI training with few bits

Residual learning spreads training over cross‑bar tiles; each four‑bit tile models the residual error, achieving linear convergence and accuracy surpassing analog methods. Read more: getnews.me/residual-learning-enable... #analogcomputing #memristor

0 0 0 0

6 months ago

Energy‑Convergence Trade‑Off in Bio‑Inspired Neural Network Training

Ferroelectric HfO₂/ZrO₂ memristive synapses trained with 20 ns pulses cut per‑update energy, though more epochs were needed; mixed‑precision updates still gave higher accuracy. getnews.me/energy-convergence-trade... #ferroelectric #memristor

0 0 0 0

6 months ago

[Highlights of 2023:FREE ARTICLE]
Demonstration of electronic synapses using a sericin-based bio-memristor
2023 Appl. Phys. Express 16 031007

iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3...

Highlights of 2023
iopscience.iop.org/journal/1882...

#APEX
#Physics
#synapse
#sericin
#memristor
#electronic

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@optoelectronadv.bsky.social

6 months ago

Aqueous Memristor Reservoir Computing Enables Echo State Networks

A study shows water‑based volatile memristors can implement Echo State and Band‑pass Reservoir Computing, with the preprint posted April 2025 and revised September 2025. Read more: getnews.me/aqueous-memristor-reserv... #memristor #rc

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Opto-Electronic Advances

6 months ago

#OEA_highlight Emerging low-dimensional perovskite resistive switching memristors: from fundamentals to devices doi.org/10.29026/oea... Prof. #Yijia_Huang @muller_group @TU_Muenchen
#low_dimensional #perovskite #memristor #Ion #migration #stability

10 8 0 1

6 months ago

[OPEN ACCESS]
Gate-tunable plasticity in artificial synaptic devices based on four-terminal amorphous gallium oxide memristors
2023 Appl. Phys. Express 16 015509

iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3...

#APEX
#OpenAccess
#Physics
#plasticity
#synaptic
#amorphous
#gallium
#memristor

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