Principal Investigators: Bilge Yildiz, Ju Li

 

Electrochemical ionic-electronic devices have an immense potential to enable a new domain of programmable hardware for machine intelligence. These novel devices work with a charge-controlled cation-intercalation mechanism, and present very high energy efficiency. Yildiz, Li and del Alamo have demonstrated such an electrochemical device to emulate long-term synaptic potentiation, using the smallest cation, proton, with energy consumption per synaptic event comparable to that in the brain. Another advantage of such electrochemical synapses is their ability to function by using the same neurotransmitter ions as those used in the biological synapses, such as Ca2+, Na+, K+. Such electrochemical synapses can also serve as building blocks in novel “brain-guided” machine intelligence architectures, to represent the learning rules that are being developed by cutting edge advances in neuroscience. This project studies the potential of electrochemical synapses to mimic brain-like functions in the solid state. We will investigate ions, material systems, device structures and circuits to accomplish this goal.