Bose Saurabh K, Mallinson Joshua B, Galli Edoardo, Acharya Susant K, Minnai Chloé, Bones Philip J, Brown Simon A
The MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology, School of Physical and Chemical Sciences, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand.
Molecular Cryo-Electron Microscopy Unit, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University, 1919-1 Tancha, Onna-son, Kunigami-gun, Okinawa, Japan.
Nanoscale Horiz. 2022 Mar 28;7(4):437-445. doi: 10.1039/d1nh00620g.
Physical systems that exhibit brain-like behaviour are currently under intense investigation as platforms for neuromorphic computing. We show that discontinuous metal films, comprising irregular flat islands on a substrate and formed using simple evaporation processes, exhibit correlated avalanches of electrical signals that mimic those observed in the cortex. We further demonstrate that these signals meet established criteria for criticality. We perform a detailed experimental investigation of the atomic-scale switching processes that are responsible for these signals, and show that they mimic the integrate-and-fire mechanism of biological neurons. Using numerical simulations and a simple circuit model, we show that the characteristic features of the switching events are dependent on the network state and the local position of the switch within the complex network. We conclude that discontinuous films provide an interesting potential platform for brain-inspired computing.
目前，表现出类脑行为的物理系统正作为神经形态计算平台受到深入研究。我们发现，由简单蒸发工艺在衬底上形成的包含不规则扁平岛状结构的不连续金属膜，会展现出与在皮层中观察到的类似的电信号相关雪崩现象。我们进一步证明，这些信号符合临界性的既定标准。我们对产生这些信号的原子尺度开关过程进行了详细的实验研究，并表明它们模拟了生物神经元的积分发放机制。通过数值模拟和一个简单的电路模型，我们表明开关事件的特征取决于网络状态以及开关在复杂网络中的局部位置。我们得出结论，不连续膜为受大脑启发的计算提供了一个有趣的潜在平台。
