Researchers from Education Campus Changa in Gujarat, India claim to have developed a blood based memristor, an electronic component that was first built at HP Labs in 2008 out of titanium dioxide. Memristors are essentially resistors that change their resistance based on earlier current flow. Resistance rises when current flows in one direction and falls in the opposite. Moreover, memristors remember (hence the name) the last time current flowed through them and affect future applications of current accordingly. The Indian researchers believe that their blood memristor research may lead to interesting medical applications where machine/tissue interfaces are important.
From the announcement:
They constructed the laboratory-based biological memristor using a 10 ml test tube filled with human blood held at 37 Celsius into which two electrodes are inserted; appropriate measuring instrumentation was attached. The experimental memristor shows that resistance varies with applied voltage polarity and magnitude and this memory effect is sustained for at least five minutes in the device.
Having demonstrated memristor behavior in blood, the next step was to test that the same behavior would be observed in a device through which blood is flowing. This step was also successful. The next stage will be to develop a micro-channel version of the flow memristor device and to integrate several to carry out particular logic functions.
Press release: Blood Simple Circuitry for Cyborgs…
Abstract in International Journal of Medical Engineering and Informatics: Human blood liquid memristor
Via: Medical Electronics Design
Image credit: Ollie Crafoord