As the world adds 50% more electricity demand each year than it did over the past decade, a team led by researchers at Penn State has developed a new way of storing large amounts of information while using little power and the DNA is doing a part of the work.
The device is built from two key components. The first is synthetic DNA that has been engineered specifically for electronics. The second is a semiconductor referred to as quasi-2D perovskite, used in technologies like solar cells and other light-based electronics.
The researchers chose synthetic DNA over natural because of its highly adaptable structure. Natural DNA, like the salmon DNA used during earlier research, is long and tangles randomly, which can interfere with the movement of electrical charges.
Synthetic DNA, however, can be programmed to fold and arrange itself into a more orderly structure but synthetic DNA by itself is a poor conductor of electricity.
In order for charges to move through the material, researchers attached silver nanoparticles to the DNA strands.
Combining these materials allowed researchers to create a new kind of memristor, or a memory resistor, which operates using little energy. Traditional resistors have a fixed resistance and do not retain memory. The team’s memristor can switch between resistance states and retain those states even after power is cut off.
This switch works because silver nanoparticles form a thread between the two ends of the device. When this thread appears and disappears, it switches the memristor between its two resistance states. Currently, technology exists only as a small-scale lab array, not a commercially available product. This innovation could eventually allow computers to store and process information in the same place, reducing the need to constantly move data between memory and processors.
In testing, the device as the researchers hoped for. It operated reliably at less than 0.1 volt, below the voltage used by similar perovskite and oxide-based memristors. The memristor also remained stable under conditions that can cause other memory devices to fail. It continued operating at temperatures up to roughly 250 degrees Fahrenheit, demonstrating its effectiveness at withstanding high temperatures without losing memory.
Researchers were also able to program the device to multiple distinct resistance levels, rather than simply switching between on and off. This change was achieved by varying the current used to program the device. Having multiple distinguishable states allows the device to increase the amount of information that can be stored in each given space.
The significance of the research extends far beyond the memristor itself. The device is part of a broader field of bio-inspired electronics, where researchers incorporate biological materials directly into electronic devices.
As Bed Poudel, a research professor at Penn State, said in a press release, “Nature has the solution. We just have to find it and apply it.” For researchers, that means looking beyond biology as something to study and instead as a source of materials and technologies that could be adapted for human use.
Poudel said the team’s work “gives a glimpse into what is possible.”
While the technology is for commercial use, the research offers a glimpse into the future of computing. As computing and artificial intelligence continue to drive electricity demand, researching ways to make computers more efficient is vital.
