Developing organic electronic materials and devices for neuromorphic computing

Current computing technologies, based on the Von Neumann architecture, are facing several bottlenecks due to Moore's law and/or memory and heat limitations. New approaches are therefore required to circumvent the imminent bottlenecks that current technology faces. Furthermore, new computing technologies are also required to power the advances being made in big data and the internet of things, and machine learning applications as well as our natural desire to learn more about the origins of life and cognition. Neuromorphic computing, inspired by the human brain, has come into focus in recent years and is one of the most promising ways to overcome the limits of von Neumann chip architecture. Organic electronic materials have shown great promise for producing neuromorphic devices and have an added advantage of being biocompatible. There have been some breakthrough papers published in recent years on organic neuromorphic devices, particularly memristors and organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs). Most reports have employed very similar polymeric materials and there is thus a need to develop new organic materials for advancing the field. In this project, new organic electronic materials will be developed that are capable of ionic and electronic conduction, a key requirement in memristors and OECTs. These materials will then be employed to fabricate organic memristors and OECTs as well as exploring new approaches to neuromorphic devices. The project is expected to lead to key advances in neuromorphic computing, bioelectronics and perhaps answer deeper questions about cognition itself.