Science: Chinese scholars report research results on nanofluid mimicry neuromimetic function

The function of the brain is closely related
to chemical signals.
However, current synaptic devices can only recognize electrical signals, and it is difficult to directly perceive chemical signals
.
The preparation of artificial synapses with chemical signal response function has become one of the scientific problems in the fields of
neural intelligent sensing and simulation.
 

With the strong support of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the team of Yu Ping and Mao Lanqun of the Key Laboratory of the School of Vital Analysis and Chemistry of the Institute of Chemistry developed a fluid memristor with polyelectrolyte limit, which used a single device to simulate neurochemical signals and electrical signal transduction for the first time
.
This research provides new ideas
for the development of chemical-like synaptic functional devices, neural intelligent sensing, neuromorphic computing, and neural prosthetics.

Based on the long-term research on brain nerve electroanalytical chemistry and confined ion transport, the research team proposed the concept of developing neurosynaptic function based on confined fluid devices
.
They constructed a polyelectrolyte-confined fluid system, found that this system had the characteristics of a memristor, and then used the transfer of ions in solution in the confined space of the polyelectrolyte brush to realize the memory effect of the device and successfully simulate a variety of neural electrical impulse behavior
.
Compared to traditional solid-state devices, the fluid devices they developed have operating voltages and power dissipation
comparable to biological systems.
More importantly, based on the characteristics of the fluid system, this device can simulate the regulation of memory function by neurotransmitters in physiological solution, and simulate the chemical regulation behavior
of synaptic plasticity.
Further, they used the polyelectrolyte's ability to recognize different pairs of ions to simulate transduction between neurochemical signals and electrical signals, taking a key step
in the simulation of chemical synapses.
The findings were published in Science (2023, 379, 156-161).
The first author of the article is PhD student Xiong Tianyi, the corresponding authors are Professor Yu Ping and Professor Mao Lanqun, and completed the work for the Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiangtan University and Beijing Normal University
.

Figure Schematic diagram of neurons (A) and sodium fluid memristor (B).