Abstract
A recent trend in the development of high mass consumption electron devices is towards electronic textiles (e-textiles), smart wearable devices, smart clothes, and flexible or printable electronics. Intrinsically soft, stretchable, flexible, Wearable Memories and Computing devices (WMCs) bring us closer to sci-fi scenarios, where future electronic systems are totally integrated in our everyday outfits and help us in achieving a higher comfort level, interacting for us with other digital devices such as smartphones and domotics, or with analog devices, such as our brain/peripheral nervous system. WMC will enable each of us to contribute to open and big data systems as individual nodes, providing real-time information about physical and environmental parameters (including air pollution monitoring, sound and light pollution, chemical or radioactive fallout alert, network availability, and so on). Furthermore, WMC could be directly connected to human brain and enable extremely fast operation and unprecedented interface complexity, directly mapping the continuous states available to biological systems. This review focuses on recent advances in nanotechnology and materials science and pays particular attention to any result and promising technology to enable intrinsically soft, stretchable, flexible WMC.
Highlights
Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Center for Sustainable Future Technologies, Corso Trento 21, Department of Applied Science and Technology, Politecnico di Torino, Corso Duca degli Abruzzi 24, 10129 Torino, Italy
The present review delves into the development of resistive switching devices (RSD), otherwise known as memristors, as the most promising candidates towards Wearable Memories and Computing devices (WMCs) applications, including their potentiality for neuromorphic computing and direct coupling with biological brains. This conclusion is supported by several authors, to cite one, in an extremely synthetic and logic reasoning [9]: (1) a brain-inspired computing system should ideally employ some form of non-volatile memory; and (2) the dominant non-volatile technology, flash, is expected to be superseded by novel technologies, such as Phase Change Memory (PCM), spin transfer torque random access memory (STT-RAM) or resistive random access memory (ReRAM)
And with a rather different approach, where we still see a carbon-based material, optical image showing three elements connected in series, having different resistive state; (b) electrical this time coupled with a metal oxide (Al2 O3 ), Jo et al created a real knitted Rewritable Random readout of their states; (c) un-strained knitted memory; (d) strained knitted memory [63]
Summary
“Flexible”, “Stretchable”, “Bendable” and “Wearable” are some of the most common terminologies which may dramatically change our individual interaction scheme without impacting on the way of living in the very near future. The present review delves into the development of resistive switching devices (RSD), otherwise known as memristors, as the most promising candidates towards WMC applications, including their potentiality for neuromorphic computing and direct coupling with biological brains. This conclusion is supported by several authors, to cite one, in an extremely synthetic and logic reasoning [9]: (1) a brain-inspired computing system should ideally employ some form of non-volatile memory; and (2) the dominant non-volatile technology, flash, is expected to be superseded by novel technologies, such as Phase Change Memory (PCM), spin transfer torque random access memory (STT-RAM) or resistive random access memory (ReRAM). Literature [35,36]
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