Computing with Heat Using Biocompatible Mott Neurons

Abstract Heat dissipation is a natural consequence of operating any electronic system. In nearly all of computing, such heat is minimized by design and discarded via cooling, while some post-digital electronics (such as phase-change memories) utilize only the static electrical outcome of such heat dissipation within a single device to represent information. Thus, neither the naturally produced heat energy nor its dynamics are directly used for computing. Here we demonstrate electronic NbO x Mott neurons integrated on a biocompatible flexible organic substrate, designed to exploit both the thermal dynamics of the Mott transition and the dynamics of thermal interactions with the organic substrate, to exhibit 18 bio-mimetic neuronal behaviors and frequency-based nociception (sensing of noxious stimuli) within a single component. Further, multiple Mott neurons can spatiotemporally communicate purely via their thermal dynamics, which we use for graph optimization by consuming over 10 7 × lower energy compared to the best digital processors. Thus, we show that naturally produced heat in electronic systems and its dynamics can be used directly to encode and process information, thereby enabling a higher-complexity energy efficient and radically novel mixed-physics computing primitive.