Periodic Reporting for period 3 - IONOS (An iono-electronic neuromorphic interface for communication with living systems)
Okres sprawozdawczy: 2021-11-01 do 2023-04-30
While our understanding of the brain have made huge progresses, we are still inefficient in interfacing biological systems with electronics, both in terms of energy and integration potential. Pushed by the need to use conventional computers for building complex systems dedicated to brain interface applications, we have mostly capitalized on technologies and architectures inherits from microelectronic that are intrinsically not adapted to interface living systems. The IONOS project will shift the brain interface paradigm by developing new technologies designed to interact intimately with biological cells and capitalizing heavily on bio-inspiration. To reach this goal, the IONOS project will explore how to sense, stimulate and compute biological signals from in-vitro neural cells’ assembly based on iono-electronic materials and devices. These emerging devices offer basics functionalities such as memory, ion-electron signal’s transduction, and amplification paving the way to a new field of device and circuit engineering that could efficiently reproduce key biological functions such as learning and spatio-temporal processing of information. This project will demonstrate how these concepts associated to the bio-inspired computing paradigm can unlock our fundamental limitations for communicating with living neural cells. Proof of concept will show how an artificial system can efficiently send, receive and compute information from a biological one, which constitutes the basic of communication.
In its first phase, the IONOS project progress in parallel in the two main field of activity of the project.
(1) We have developped neuromorphic sensors for neural cells' activity recording based on iono-electronic materials. Passive and active sensors have been fabricated and charaterized for the recording of brain slices activity. Notably, we are currently exploring how organic materials can be used to create "plastic" sensors that could adapte to biological medium. We are also exploring how spatio-temporal sensing with dendritic like sensors can be used to process neural cells activity.
(2) We have put strong efforts for increasing the maturity level of neuromorphic hardware. In particular, we have developped a fully back end of line compatible process for memristive devices integration with CMOS. This work wil allow us to access to neuromorphic hardware for processing bio-signals. Such neuromorphic circuits are expected to reduce drastically energy consumption and to provide a large parallelism for time dependent signal processing.
(1) We have developped neuromorphic sensors for neural cells' activity recording based on iono-electronic materials. Passive and active sensors have been fabricated and charaterized for the recording of brain slices activity. Notably, we are currently exploring how organic materials can be used to create "plastic" sensors that could adapte to biological medium. We are also exploring how spatio-temporal sensing with dendritic like sensors can be used to process neural cells activity.
(2) We have put strong efforts for increasing the maturity level of neuromorphic hardware. In particular, we have developped a fully back end of line compatible process for memristive devices integration with CMOS. This work wil allow us to access to neuromorphic hardware for processing bio-signals. Such neuromorphic circuits are expected to reduce drastically energy consumption and to provide a large parallelism for time dependent signal processing.
So far, we have proposed an innovative way for engineering of iono-electronic materials and devices. Based on electropolymerization technic, we are showing how sensors can be designed and optimized in a bottom-up way. In fact, such bottom-up appoach brings strong ressemblances with the way biological networks evolved and create their own functionnality. we hope that this work will open new perspectives for futur sensing technologies.
Ultimately, innovative sensing approches will be coupled with neuromorphic hardware in order to demonstrate efficient communication in between artificial and biological medium.
Ultimately, innovative sensing approches will be coupled with neuromorphic hardware in order to demonstrate efficient communication in between artificial and biological medium.