Lifeboat Foundation

Current computing systems rely on Boolean logic and von Neumann architecture, where computing cells are based on high-speed electron-conducting complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) transistors. In contrast, ions play an essential role in biological neural computing. Compared with CMOS units, the synapse/neuron computing speed is much lower, but the human brain performs much better in many tasks such as pattern recognition and decision-making. Recently, ionic dynamics in oxide electrolyte-gated transistors have attracted increasing attention in the field of neuromorphic computing, which is more similar to the computing modality in the biological brain. In this review article, we start with the introduction of some ionic processes in biological brain computing. Then, electrolyte-gated ionic transistors, especially oxide ionic transistors, are briefly introduced. Later, we review the state-of-the-art progress in oxide electrolyte-gated transistors for ionic neuromorphic computing including dynamic synaptic plasticity emulation, spatiotemporal information processing, and artificial sensory neuron function implementation. Finally, we will address the current challenges and offer recommendations along with potential research directions.

Keywords: bio-inspired computing; ionic transistors; oxide semiconductors.

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Brain-inspired neuromorphic computing and portable intelligent electronic products have received increasing attention. In the present work, nanocellulose-gated indium tin oxide neuromorphic transistors are fabricated. The device exhibits good electrical performance. Short-term synaptic plasticities were mimicked, including excitatory postsynaptic current, paired-pulse facilitation, and dynamic high-pass synaptic filtering. Interestingly, an effective linear synaptic weight updating strategy was adopted, resulting in an excellent recognition accuracy of ∼92.93% for the Modified National Institute of Standard and Technology database adopting a two-layer multilayer perceptron neural network. Moreover, with unique interfacial protonic coupling, anxiety disorder behavior was conceptually emulated, exhibiting “neurosensitization”, “primary and secondary fear”, and “fear-adrenaline secretion-exacerbated fear”. Finally, the neuromorphic transistors could be dissolved in water, demonstrating potential in “green” electronics. These findings indicate that the proposed oxide neuromorphic transistors would have potential as implantable chips for nerve health diagnosis, neural prostheses, and brain-machine interfaces.

Keywords: anxiety disorders; neuromorphic computing; oxide neuromorphic transistors; proton coupling; synaptic plasticity.

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Recently, neuromorphic computing has been proposed to overcome the drawbacks of the current von Neumann computing architecture. Especially, spiking neural network (SNN) has received significant attention due to its ability to mimic the spike-driven behavior of biological neurons and synapses, potentially leading to low-power consumption and other advantages. In this work, we designed the indium-gallium-zinc oxide (IGZO) channel charge-trap flash (CTF) synaptic device based on a HfO₂/Al₂O₃/Si₃N₄/Al₂O₃ layer. Our IGZO-based CTF device exhibits synaptic functions with 128 levels of synaptic weight states and spike-timing-dependent plasticity. The SNN-restricted Boltzmann machine was used to simulate the fabricated CTF device to evaluate the efficiency for the SNN system, achieving the high pattern-recognition accuracy of 83.9%. We believe that our results show the suitability of the fabricated IGZO CTF device as a synaptic device for neuromorphic computing.

Keywords: charge trap flash; neuromorphic computing; nonvolatile memory; oxide semiconductor; spiking neural network.

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Owing to the 4th Industrial Revolution, the amount of unstructured data, such as voice and video data, is rapidly increasing. Brain-inspired neuromorphic computing is a new computing method that can efficiently and parallelly process rapidly increasing data. Among artificial neural networks that mimic the structure of the brain, the spiking neural network (SNN) is a network that imitates the information-processing method of biological neural networks. Recently, memristors have attracted attention as synaptic devices for neuromorphic computing systems. Among them, the ferroelectric doped-HfO₂-based ferroelectric tunnel junction (FTJ) is considered as a strong candidate for synaptic devices due to its advantages, such as complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor device/process compatibility, a simple two-terminal structure, and low power consumption. However, research on the spiking operations of FTJ devices for SNN applications is lacking. In this study, the implementation of long-term depression and potentiation as the spike timing-dependent plasticity (STDP) rule in the FTJ device was successful. Based on the measured data, a CrossSim simulator was used to simulate the classification of handwriting images. With a high accuracy of 95.79% for the Mixed National Institute of Standards and Technology (MNIST) dataset, the simulation results demonstrate that our device is capable of differentiating between handwritten images. This suggests that our FTJ device can be used as a synaptic device for implementing an SNN.

Keywords: FTJ; SNN; STDP; neuromorphic computing; synaptic devices.

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Memristor synapses based on green and pollution-free organic materials are expected to facilitate biorealistic neuromorphic computing and to be an important step toward the next generation of green electronics. Metalloporphyrin is an organic compound that widely exists in nature with good biocompatibility and stable chemical properties, and has already been used to fabricate memristors. However, the application of metalloporphyrin-based memristors as synaptic devices still faces challenges, such as realizing a high switching ratio, low power consumption, and bidirectional conductance modulation. We developed a memristor that improves the resistive switching (RS) characteristics of Zn(II)meso-tetra(4-carboxyphenyl) porphine (ZnTCPP) by combining it with deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) in a composite film. The as-fabricated ZnTCPP-DNA-based device showed excellent RS memory characteristics with a sufficiently high switching ratio of up to ∼10⁴, super low power consumption of ∼39.56 nW, good cycling stability, and data retention capability. Moreover, bidirectional conductance modulation of the ZnTCPP-DNA-based device can be controlled by modulating the amplitudes, durations, and intervals of positive and negative pulses. The ZnTCPP-DNA-based device was used to successfully simulate a series of synaptic functions including long-term potentiation, long-term depression, spike time-dependent plasticity, paired-pulse facilitation, excitatory postsynaptic current, and human learning behavior, which demonstrates its potential applicability to neuromorphic devices. A two-layer artificial neural network was used to demonstrate the digit recognition ability of the ZnTCPP-DNA-based device, which reached 97.22% after 100 training iterations. These results create a new avenue for the research and development of green electronics and have major implications for green low-power neuromorphic computing in the future.

Keywords: artificial synapses; memristors; neuromorphic computing; porphyrin−DNA composite films; superlow power consumption.

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Memristors with controllable resistive switching (RS) behavior have been considered as promising candidates for synaptic devices in next-generation neuromorphic computing. In this work, two-terminal memristors with controllable digital and analog RS behavior are fabricated based on two-dimensional (2D) WSe₂ nanosheets. Under a relatively high operating voltage of 4 V, the memristor demonstrates stable and reliable non-volatile bipolar digital RS with a high switching ratio of 6.3 × 10⁴. On the other hand, under a relatively low operation voltage, the memristor exhibits analog RS with a series of tunable resistance states. The fabricated memristors can work as an artificial synapse with fundamental synaptic functions, such as long-term potentiation (LTP) and depression (LTD) as well as paired-pulse facilitation (PPF). More importantly, the memristor demonstrates high conductance modulation linearity with the calculated nonlinear parameter for conductance as-0.82 in the LTP process, which is beneficial to improving the accuracy of neuromorphic computing. Furthermore, the neuromorphic computing of file types and image recognition can be emulated based on a constructed three-layer artificial neural network (ANN) with a recognition accuracy that can reach up to 95.9% for small digits. In addition, memristors can be used to emulate the learning-forgetting experience of the human brain. Consequently, the memristor based on 2D WSe₂ nanosheets not only exhibits controllable RS behavior but also simulates synaptic functions and is expected to be a potential candidate for future neuromorphic computing applications.

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Memristive devices with both electrically and optically induced synaptic dynamic behaviors will be crucial to the accomplishment of brain-inspired neuromorphic computing systems, in which the resistive materials and device architectures are two of the most important cornerstones, but still under challenge. Herein, kuramite Cu3SnS4 is newly introduced into poly-methacrylate as the switching medium to construct memristive devices, and the expected high-performance bio-mimicry of diverse optoelectronic synaptic plasticity is demonstrated. In addition to the excellent basic performances, such as stable bipolar resistive switching with On/Off ratio of ∼486, Set/Reset voltage of ∼-0.88/+0.96 V, and good retention feature of up to 104 s, the new designs of memristors possess not only the multi-level controllable resistive-switching memory property but also the capability of mimicking optoelectronic synaptic plasticity, including electrically and visible/near-infrared light-induced excitatory postsynaptic currents, short-/long-term memory, spike-timing-dependent plasticity, long-term plasticity/depression, short-term plasticity, paired-pulse facilitation, and “learning-forgetting-learning” behavior as well. Predictably, as a new class of switching medium material, such proposed kuramite-based artificial optoelectronic synaptic device has great potential to be applied to construct neuromorphic architectures in simulating human brain functions.

© 2023 Author(s). Published under an exclusive license by AIP Publishing.

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More than 3.5 billion years ago, life on Earth emerged from chemical reactions. Nature invented RNA, proteins, and DNA, the core molecules of life, and created the ribosome, a molecular factory that builds proteins from instructions in the genome.

Proteins are wondrous dynamic molecules with incredible functions—from molecular engines that power motion, to photosynthetic machines that capture light and convert it to energy, scaffolding that builds the internal skeletons of cells, complex sensors that interact with the environment, and information processing systems that run the programs and operating system of life. Proteins underlie disease and health, and many life-saving medicines are proteins.

Biology is the most advanced technology that has ever been created, far beyond anything that people have engineered. The ribosome is programmable—it takes the codes of proteins in the form of RNA and builds them up from scratch—fabrication at the atomic scale. Every cell in every organism on earth has thousands to millions of these molecular factories. But even the most sophisticated computational tools created to date barely scratch the surface: biology is written in a language we don’t yet understand.

The enzyme telomerase can prevent telomere attrition from happening by extending the length of telomeres. However, in most multicellular organisms, including humans, telomerase expression is switched off, except in germ cells, some types of stem cells, and certain white blood cells. While this might play a role in preventing cancer, as most cancerous cells must switch telomerase expression back on via mutations to enable runaway replication, numerous studies have shown that increasing telomerase through TERT delays aging and increases longevity of model organisms [1].

The small molecule that could

In the lab, this is usually done by introducing genetic vectors carrying a working copy of the gene that codes TERT. It’s this gene that is switched off in somatic cells. However, gene therapies are complex and expensive, and they are just entering the medical mainstream. What if we could do the same using a small molecule?