Proton Transistor Could Help Machines and Organisms Communicate

By Rebecca Boyle Posted 09.21.2011 at 12:40 pm 7 Comments

Protonic Transistors These schematics show protonic transistor channel charge carrier modulation for negative (left) and positive (right) gate voltages. Nature Communications

Human-machine interfaces are constantly improving, but our inability to fully integrate electronics into our bodies stems in part from the very nature of that word — electronics. For the most part, machines relay information using electrons, but living systems use protons and ions. Now a new proton-based transistor built partly from crab shells could open the gates to a new method of communication between machines and biological systems.

Proton transport is important for several biological processes, notably mitochondrial respiration, and living organisms’ electrical signals are modulated using protonic and ionic currents. So a machine that could mimic this type of information transfer could be used, for example, to monitor biological processes. Someday it could even be used to integrate new devices, like prosthetics, or to control biological systems — say, opening ion channels within cells to allow drugs to pass through.

We’ve seen other systems designed to do this, like synaptic transistors, soft biocompatible memristors, and nanoscale devices that use proton-conductive proteins. But those are difficult to build, say Chao Zhong and colleagues at the University of Washington, writing in the journal Nature Communications. It would be useful to have a device based on the type of transistors we all know so well, simply using a different type of current.

In a first step toward functional protonics, Zhong and colleagues built a protonic field-effect transistor. It works exactly like an FET in an electronic system — it has a terminal, a gate and a drain, and it can send pulses of current. The device is partly made from a compound called chitosan, extracted from squid. It can be recycled from crab shells and squid pen discarded by the food industry, according to a UW news release. It is biodegradable, biocompatible and non-toxic, the researchers say. The chitosan absorbs water and forms hydrogen bonds, and protons that are dissociated from maleic acids move along this hydrogen-doped channel.

The main drawback for now is that this FET also uses silicon, so it couldn’t be used in the human body; its main use would likely be direct sensing of cells in a lab. But a biocompatible version using some other type of semiconductor could conceivably be implanted in a living organism, monitoring proton activity and sending it to a protonic — not an electronic — device.

[UW News]

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7 Comments

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extremechiton

09/21/11 at 1:13 pm

so this is how we make ancient technology a reality.
all we need now are anti gravity drive, drones, and special dna to make a puddle jumper

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pheonix1012

09/21/11 at 1:37 pm

@extremechiton

Close. I think this is more for medical purposes. Although the machine human interface could do just that.

As far as a puddle jumper is concerned, weaponized drones exist in the form of semi-autonomous ballistic missiles with heat and radar seeking capabilities, anti-grav technology is far off from pratical (still holding out hopes though), and this platform could be used to respond to our unique DNA. That's how ATA works. Certain technological designs (particularly Lantean) respond to the DNA characteristics of ancients.

Tweek nano-scale proton based transistors to respond physiologically and neurologically to only human DNA, and allow the devices to replicate and reproduce in human progeny, and you have a real life version of ATA gene; so long as the transistors are designed to interface between human physiology and digital devices.

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Arta Wing

09/21/11 at 4:06 pm

I think it's so cool how people are considering using alternate subatomic particles for... whatever you call their kind of electricity. i never considered that possibility. It is very exciting, i cant wait to see how this type of energy compares to electricity. I can imagine computers that actually monitor the rate of aging and adds whatever to counter it, or neural enhancements. but what i really want to see is how this energy compares with electricity! since electrons are the smallest basic atomic particle, would it be the weakest, yet most efficient, form of energy? I would think that if Proton-icity is more powerful, it would be used for industrial machines, or machines of war. i'm not sure. :/

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Batqul

09/21/11 at 6:19 pm

Sweet one step closer to a math chip for my brain. Its all I really want, an embedded calculator in my head.

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JediMindset

09/21/11 at 6:59 pm

and so skynet was born.....

_________________
The people of the world only divide into two kinds, One sort with brains who hold no religion, The other with religion and no brain.

- Abu-al-Ala al-Marri

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Lord Elliot the...

09/21/11 at 11:49 pm

I want the life signs detector, personally.
-Spouting a fountain of nonsense since 1995-

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vt007

09/22/11 at 5:09 pm

@Lord Elliot the...
Yeah! PipBoy FTW! ^^

bored? lets go mine the stars... ^^

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