Yashin Victor V, Levitan Steven P, Balazs Anna C
Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15261, USA.
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15261, USA.
Sci Rep. 2015 Jun 24;5:11577. doi: 10.1038/srep11577.
Lightweight, deformable materials that can sense and respond to human touch and motion can be the basis of future wearable computers, where the material itself will be capable of performing computations. To facilitate the creation of "materials that compute", we draw from two emerging modalities for computation: chemical computing, which relies on reaction-diffusion mechanisms to perform operations, and oscillatory computing, which performs pattern recognition through synchronization of coupled oscillators. Chemical computing systems, however, suffer from the fact that the reacting species are coupled only locally; the coupling is limited by diffusion as the chemical waves propagate throughout the system. Additionally, oscillatory computing systems have not utilized a potentially wearable material. To address both these limitations, we develop the first model for coupling self-oscillating polymer gels to a piezoelectric (PZ) micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS). The resulting transduction between chemo-mechanical and electrical energy creates signals that can be propagated quickly over long distances and thus, permits remote, non-diffusively coupled oscillators to communicate and synchronize. Moreover, the oscillators can be organized into arbitrary topologies because the electrical connections lift the limitations of diffusive coupling. Using our model, we predict the synchronization behavior that can be used for computational tasks, ultimately enabling "materials that compute".
轻量级、可变形且能感知并响应人类触摸和动作的材料,可成为未来可穿戴计算机的基础,在这种计算机中,材料本身将具备执行计算的能力。为推动“可计算材料”的创造,我们借鉴了两种新兴的计算模式:化学计算,它依靠反应扩散机制来执行操作;以及振荡计算,它通过耦合振荡器的同步来执行模式识别。然而,化学计算系统存在这样一个问题,即反应物种仅在局部耦合;随着化学波在整个系统中传播,这种耦合受到扩散的限制。此外,振荡计算系统尚未利用一种可能适用于可穿戴设备的材料。为解决这两个限制,我们开发了首个将自振荡聚合物凝胶与压电(PZ)微机电系统(MEMS)耦合的模型。由此产生的化学机械能与电能之间的转换产生了能够在远距离快速传播的信号,从而使远程、非扩散耦合的振荡器能够进行通信和同步。此外,振荡器可以被组织成任意拓扑结构,因为电气连接消除了扩散耦合的限制。利用我们的模型,我们预测了可用于计算任务的同步行为,最终实现“可计算材料”。