The rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) technology needs a very large number of electronic components to process information and transmit data, which leads to intensive energy consumption. A shift in computation from calculation and storage to pattern recognition and other AI tasks also drives the need for more energy-efficient architectures. The development in brain science has given people a deeper understanding of the physiological processes of the brain's ultra-low energy consumption in the process of computing and memory. Therefore, a computing architecture that is inspired by the human brain to mimic the energy-efficient mechanisms in signal transport and information storage is a new trend and new challenge for the design and development of a new computer or brain-computer interface (BCI).

On August 6, 2021, Prof. Xu Hou, a member of the lab, was invited to contribute a Perspectives and provide the new concept of “bioinspired nanofluidic iontronics”, which is promising in the future BCI and AI. (Science, 2021, 373, 628). The article briefly overviewed the development of nanofluidic iontronics in the past few years and proposed that learning from nature to design new nanofluidic iontronic systems will become a promising strategy for promoting the development of nanofluidic iontronics. At the end of the article, the potential applications and great prospects of the nanofluidic iontronic devices in the future BCI, biomimetic ion-based computing systems, and AI are highlighted.

Read more: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/373/6555/628

Xu Hou group’s link: https://xuhougroup.xmu.edu.cn/