New printable thin films may soon help power Internet of Things

Scientists, including one of Indian origin, have designed printable, organic thin films for “neuromorphic” computers inspired by the human brain, which will help power Internet of Things. Internet of Things (IoT) need components and chips that can handle huge quantities of data. In 2020, there will already be 50 billion industrial internet sensors in place all around us. A single autonomous device – a smart watch, a cleaning robot, or a driverless car – can produce gigabytes of data each day, whereas an airbus may have over 10,000 sensors in one wing alone.

Current transistors in computer chips must be miniaturised to the size of only few nanometres, and analysing and storing unprecedented amounts of data will require huge amounts of energy. Sayani Majumdar, from the Aalto University in Finland, along with her colleagues, designed and fabricated the basic building blocks of “neuromorphic” computers inspired by the human brain. “The technology and design of neuromorphic computing is advancing more rapidly than its rival revolution, quantum computing,” said Majumdar.

“The key is to achieve the extreme energy-efficiency of a biological brain and mimic the way neural networks process information through electric impulses,” she said. In a study published in the journal Advanced Functional …read more