Overview
- Researchers cultivated shiitake and button mushrooms, dehydrated samples, and wired them to custom circuits to produce organic memristors that retained prior electrical states.
- The fungal devices switched up to 5,850 times per second with about 90% accuracy in two months of tests, matching key memory-like behaviors seen in semiconductor components.
- Performance declined at higher frequencies, but stability improved when multiple mushroom samples were connected, echoing network effects seen in neural systems.
- The team highlights sustainability benefits, noting the components are biodegradable, inexpensive to produce, and do not rely on rare-earth metals; shiitake mycelium is also reported as radiation resistant.
- Findings were published in PLOS One by lead author John LaRocco with Ohio State colleagues, with support from the Honda Research Institute, and potential uses cited in edge computing, aerospace, autonomous systems, and wearables.