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Research Highlight | Physical Sciences and Engineering

Computer hardware mimics brain functions

For a study published in Science, researchers developed and tested a perovskite nickelate with which computer chips can be designed to reconfigure their circuits when presented with new information.

Scientific Achievement

By applying electric pulses to a hydrogen-doped perovskite nickelate, the hydrogen ions redistributed in such a way as to enable distinct metastable states. As a result, a single device can be reconfigured as a resistor, memory capacitor, artificial neuron, or artificial synapse.

Significance and Impact

A perovskite nickelate device enables construction of a reconfigurable hardware platform for brain-inspired computers with greater power and energy efficiency than their static counterparts.

Research Details

•Experiments demonstrated that simply altering the voltage controls the movement of hydrogen ions within the nickelate.
 
•High-performance computer calculations and synchrotron  X-ray analyses revealed the mechanism behind the metastable states.
 

DOI: 10.1126/science.abj7943

 

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Work was performed, in part, at the Carbon Cluster in the Center for Nanoscale Materials, the Advanced Photon Source, Argonne Leadership Computing Facility, and National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center.

 

About Argonne’s Center for Nanoscale Materials
The Center for Nanoscale Materials is one of the five DOE Nanoscale Science Research Centers, premier national user facilities for interdisciplinary research at the nanoscale supported by the DOE Office of Science. Together the NSRCs comprise a suite of complementary facilities that provide researchers with state-of-the-art capabilities to fabricate, process, characterize and model nanoscale materials, and constitute the largest infrastructure investment of the National Nanotechnology Initiative. The NSRCs are located at DOE’s Argonne, Brookhaven, Lawrence Berkeley, Oak Ridge, Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories. For more information about the DOE NSRCs, please visit https://​sci​ence​.osti​.gov/​U​s​e​r​-​F​a​c​i​l​i​t​i​e​s​/​U​s​e​r​-​F​a​c​i​l​i​t​i​e​s​-​a​t​-​a​-​G​lance.

Argonne National Laboratory seeks solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology. The nation’s first national laboratory, Argonne conducts leading-edge basic and applied scientific research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne researchers work closely with researchers from hundreds of companies, universities, and federal, state and municipal agencies to help them solve their specific problems, advance America’s scientific leadership and prepare the nation for a better future. With employees from more than 60 nations, Argonne is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://​ener​gy​.gov/​s​c​ience.