Redox Gating Could Lead to New Levels of Efficiency in Tiny Electronics

Improving Microelectronics With Redox Gating

Microelectronics like computer chips use increasingly small transistors, resulting in a growing difficulty in manufacturing them efficiently.

This also causes growing issues with power consumption and managing the heat generated.

The boom of AI means that this power consumption might explode, with forecasts that by 2030 AI could account for 3% to 4% of global power demand. This is before a boom in quantum computing, a field we discussed the most recent progress in our article “The Current State of Quantum Computing.”

As a result, novel ways to manipulate electrons, including at the quantum level, are required.

So, it is exciting news that researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory have demonstrated a new type of transistor-like system that operates with much lower voltage, something called Redox Gating.

What is Redox Gating?

In their publication, “Redox Gating for Colossal Carrier Modulation and Unique Phase Control,” they explain the basic principles of Redox Gating and redox-based electronics.

Normally, silicon transistors rely on electric fields to control the flow of electrons used by the transistor to perform computing.

Instead, redox gating uses a low-voltage current and applies it to an “electron gate.” When the voltage goes above a certain threshold, the gate opens and lets electrons pass. The electron is provided by a redox material (a molecule able to “give away” electrons), hence the name “redox gating.”

The redox material can be cycled back with no damage, allowing for what is more a chemical than electronic reaction to be repeated an almost infinite number of times.

Source: Advanced Materials

The researchers demonstrated the principle of redox gating with no less than 3 different materials:

• conjugated poly(ionic liquids) (PILs)
• metal-containing PILs
• simple metal salts.

The high capacitance gate dielectrics were made with Tungsten (VI) oxide (WO3) and Vanadium (IV) oxide (VO2).

The research work was made possible thanks to pre-existing installations helping to produce the material and analyze the redox gates like the Argonne’s Center for Nanoscale Materials and the Argonne’s Advanced Photon Source.

Redox Gating Potential

Power Consumption

Because the tested redox gates work with power as low as half a volt, this could open the way for microelectronics that consume very little power and generate very little heat.

More power efficiency and reduced cooling needs might become very important as computing capacity and the energy it uses might become the chokepoint for further progress in AI.

The versatility of redox gating mechanisms also could be “paving the way for the adoption of environmentally benign materials and the development of innovative device architectures”.

Quantum Computing

Quantum computing is an emerging field that promises to solve problems that are virtually impossible to compute with normal silicon transistors.

Redox Gating could also contribute to quantum computing progress. More specifically, it could help develop quantum logic gates that operate at low power.

Considering that quantum computers went from single-digit qubits to recently passing the threshold of thousands of qubits, keeping the power consumption under control might be required to see the field becoming commercially viable.

Brain-like Calculations

Another promising aspect of redox gating is that it operates at very low voltage and allows for fine-tuning electron flow.

This is exactly how human neurons process and amplify electric signals. Thus, it could ultimately allow the development of electronic chip designs that operate like brains.

Considering that the brain likely “computes” through elements of low voltage analogic calculations (gradation instead of absolute 1 & 0) and potentially quantum computing effects (the quantum mind theory), this could be the (only?) way to create AI with human-like abilities or real consciousness.

Conclusion

Redox Gating might initially seem a very obscure and niche idea in microelectronics.

However, it demonstrates that semiconductors and computing are far from being limited to just reducing the size of transistors. Together with other innovations, it could open the way for low-voltage, low-waste heat, and low-toxicity chips.

And they might even be boosting quantum computing potential as well as be the building block of brain-like computing systems in the decades to come.