A group of American scientists from Texas A&M University and Stanford University have created a new class of materials that behave like cells in the nervous system. They spontaneously amplify electrical signals as they move along a transmission line. The study was published in the scientific journal magazine Nature.
Any electrical signal propagating through a metal conductor will lose amplitude due to the metal’s inherent resistance. Modern data processors and graphics processors can contain about 50 kilometers of thin copper wires that move electrical impulses within the chip. These losses accumulate quickly, requiring amplifiers to maintain transmission integrity. Design limitations affect the performance of modern processors.
To overcome this limitation, researchers turned to axons, the part of a nerve cell or neuron that can transmit electrical impulses away from the nerve cell body without wasting energy.
The materials the team discovered exist in a prepared state that allows them to spontaneously amplify a voltage pulse similar to axons.
The researchers took advantage of an electronic phase transition in lanthanum cobalt oxide, which causes the compound to become much more electrically conductive when heated.
This feature provides positive feedback by interacting with the small amount of heat generated as the signal passes through the material.
The findings could be critical to the future of computing, which is driving increasing demand for energy use, the authors of the discovery said.
Scientists have previously discovered for the first time was created a one-dimensional photon gas of pure light.
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Source: Gazeta
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