Ohio State University researchers have created computer components from common shiitake mushrooms that can store and “remember” electrical information, similar to the circuits of today’s computers.
The discovery could lead to the creation of a cheap and environmentally friendly alternative to the memory components used today.
The result is a memristor with performance comparable to that of a silicon-based chip, but potentially cheap, scalable, and environmentally friendly in ways that many computer components today are not.
“The ability to develop microchips that mimic real neural activity means that not much power is needed for standby or when the device is not in use,” says psychiatrist John LaRocco.
“This is something that can be a huge computational and economic advantage”
The team used shiitake mushrooms because this species is particularly robust and resistant to stressors such as radiation. The researchers seeded nine samples in Petri dishes with shiitake spores and grew them under controlled temperature and humidity conditions.
When the mycelium had grown sufficiently, the samples were dried in direct sunlight to ensure long-term viability, then connected to a specially constructed circuit to be tested with electrical current.
The researchers achieved a performance of 5,850 Hertz, – switching signals at a rate of about 5,850 times per second. The slowest commercially available memristors start at just under twice this speed, so the experiment is extremely promising for the first steps.
The researchers found that as the voltage increased, the performance of the mushroom decreased, but they were able to compensate for this by adding more mushrooms to the circuit.
The findings indicate that this is a promising avenue for future research and development toward accessible, inexpensive, and biodegradable components, with potential applications ranging from personal devices to aerospace.
“All it takes to start exploring fungi and computing could be as little as a compost pile and a few home electronics,” says LaRocco.
The research was published in the journal PLOS One.
