Nature inspires a new form of computer science using light

HAMILTON, ON, May 24, 2019 – Researchers at McMaster have developed a simple and highly innovative computer form of shining bands of light and shadow across different facets of a polymer cube and read the combined results that result.

The material contained in the cube reads and reacts intuitively to light in the same way that a plant would turn to the sun or that a cuttlefish would change the color of its skin.

The researchers are graduate students in chemistry under the direction of Kalaichelvi Saravanamuttu, badociate professor of chemistry and chemical biology, whose lab focuses on ideas inspired by natural biological systems.

The researchers were able to use their new process to perform simple addition and subtraction questions.

"These are autonomous materials that respond to stimuli and perform intelligent operations," says Saravanamuttu. "We are very happy to be able to add and subtract in this way, and we are thinking of ways to perform other computing functions."

The work of the researchers, published today in the journal Nature Communications, represents a brand new form of computer science, promises a complex and useful function to imagine, possibly organized according to the structures of neural networks.

The computer form is very localized, does not require any source of energy and functions completely in the visible spectrum.

The technology is part of a branch of chemistry called nonlinear dynamics and uses materials designed and manufactured to produce specific reactions to light.

A researcher radiates light strips superimposed on the top and sides of a tiny showcase containing the amber colored polymer, itself about the size of a dice used in a board game. The polymer starts as a liquid and turns into a gel in response to light.

A neutral carrier beam pbades through the cube from behind to a camera that reads the results, as refracted by the cube material, whose components spontaneously form into thousands of filaments that react to patterns of light to produce pattern dimension that expresses the result.

"We do not want to compete with existing IT technologies," says Fariha Mahmood, co-author, MSc student in chemistry. "We are trying to build materials with smarter and more sophisticated responses."

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