{"id":245429,"date":"2026-10-15T01:49:14","date_gmt":"2026-10-15T06:49:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/jamming-the-flow-to-enable-memory-in-quantum-materials"},"modified":"2026-10-15T01:49:14","modified_gmt":"2026-10-15T06:49:14","slug":"jamming-the-flow-to-enable-memory-in-quantum-materials","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/jamming-the-flow-to-enable-memory-in-quantum-materials","title":{"rendered":"Jamming the flow to enable memory in quantum materials"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/jamming-the-flow-to-enable-memory-in-quantum-materials.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Understanding and controlling phase transitions are fundamental to physics and central to many technological revolutions. There is currently strong interest in materials with coupled structural and electronic phase transitions, where controlling the transition plasticity naturally yields built-in memory\u2014a key step in emulating neurons and synapses for \u201cneuromorphic\u201d or brain-like computing technologies.<\/p>\n<p>A team of UC San Diego researchers led by physics professor Oleg Shpyrko developed a new approach to coherent X-ray diffraction\u2014a microscopy technique that is highly sensitive to specific <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2025-12-ultrafast-magnetic-domain-nanoscale-soft.html?utm_source=embeddings&utm_medium=related&utm_campaign=internal\" rel=\"related\">nanoscale domain configurations <\/a>\u2014that allowed them to observe dynamics within a neuristor (a man-made device that mimics the brain\u2019s neurons) made of vanadium dioxide while electricity was applied.<\/p>\n<p>By taking measurements while operating the neuristor, they discovered a strategy to make the material learn and forget a specific state, opening an avenue toward developing energy-efficient brain-inspired hardware.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Understanding and controlling phase transitions are fundamental to physics and central to many technological revolutions. There is currently strong interest in materials with coupled structural and electronic phase transitions, where controlling the transition plasticity naturally yields built-in memory\u2014a key step in emulating neurons and synapses for \u201cneuromorphic\u201d or brain-like computing technologies. A team of UC [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1523,4,47,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-245429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computing","category-nanotechnology","category-neuroscience","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245429\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}