It may sound like sci-fi, but engineers believe that circuitry that links human tissues and nerve cells directly to a robotic limb or artificial eye might one day be possible.
A team in India says it is possible to make a ‘memristor’ – a resistor-type device that retains the memory of a current – using human blood.
S.P. Kosta, from the Education Campus Changa in Gujarat, and colleagues built a laboratory-based biological memristor using a 10ml test tube that was filled with human blood and stabilised at 37C.
Two electrodes were inserted and appropriate measuring instrumentation was attached. The experimental memristor showed that resistance varied, but the memory effect was sustained for at least five minutes in the device.
They then tested the memristor behaviour through a device in which blood was flowing and that was also successful, reports the International Journal of Medical Engineering and Informatics.
The authors hope now to develop a micro-channel version of the flow memristor device and to integrate several to carry out particular logic functions.
Human blood liquid memristor. Int. J. Medical Engineering and Informatics, 2011, 3, 16-29
Leave a Reply