“Human brains can actually change as a result of learning new things,” said Subramanian Sankaranarayanan, a paper co-author with a joint appointment at Argonne and the University of Illinois Chicago. “We have now created a device for machines to reconfigure their circuits in a brain-like way.”
The key material in the new device consists of neodymium, nickel, and oxygen and is referred to as perovskite nickelate . The team infused this material with hydrogen and attached electrodes to it that allow electrical pulses to be applied at different voltages. For its contribution, the Argonne team carried out the computational and experimental characterization of what happens in the nickelate device under different voltages. To that end, they relied on DOE Office of Science user facilities at Argonne: theThe experimental results demonstrated that simply altering the voltage controls the movement of hydrogen ions within the nickelate. A certain voltage concentrates hydrogen at the nickelate center, spawning neuron-like behavior.
“Over the years we have had a very productive partnership with the Purdue group,” Zhou said. “Here, the team determined exactly how atoms arrange within the nickelate under different voltages. Especially important was tracking the material’s response at the atomic scale to the movement of hydrogen.”