2020, Kiani, Mahdi, Tannert, Astrid, Du, Nan, Hübner, Uwe, Skorupa, Ilona, Bürger, Danilo, Zhao, Xianyue, Blaschke, Daniel, Rebohle, Lars, Cherkouk, Charaf, Neugebauer, Ute, Schmidt, Oliver G., Schmidt, Heidemarie

We counted bacterial cells of E. coli strain K12 in several-microliter DI water or in several-microliter PBS in the low optical density (OD) range (OD = 0.05–1.08) in contact with the surface of Si-based impedance biochips with ring electrodes by impedance measurements. The multiparameter fit of the impedance data allowed calibration of the impedance data with the concentration cb of the E. coli cells in the range of cb = 0.06 to 1.26 × 109 cells/mL. The results showed that for E. coli in DI water and in PBS, the modelled impedance parameters depend linearly on the concentration of cells in the range of cb = 0.06 to 1.26 × 109 cells/mL, whereas the OD, which was independently measured with a spectrophotometer, was only linearly dependent on the concentration of the E. coli cells in the range of cb = 0.06 to 0.50 × 109 cells/mL.

2021, Du, Nan, Zhao, Xianyue, Chen, Ziang, Choubey, Bhaskar, Di Ventra, Massimiliano, Skorupa, Ilona, Bürger, Danilo, Schmidt, Heidemarie

Emerging brain-inspired neuromorphic computing paradigms require devices that can emulate the complete functionality of biological synapses upon different neuronal activities in order to process big data flows in an efficient and cognitive manner while being robust against any noisy input. The memristive device has been proposed as a promising candidate for emulating artificial synapses due to their complex multilevel and dynamical plastic behaviors. In this work, we exploit ultrastable analog BiFeO3 (BFO)-based memristive devices for experimentally demonstrating that BFO artificial synapses support various long-term plastic functions, i.e., spike timing-dependent plasticity (STDP), cycle number-dependent plasticity (CNDP), and spiking rate-dependent plasticity (SRDP). The study on the impact of electrical stimuli in terms of pulse width and amplitude on STDP behaviors shows that their learning windows possess a wide range of timescale configurability, which can be a function of applied waveform. Moreover, beyond SRDP, the systematical and comparative study on generalized frequency-dependent plasticity (FDP) is carried out, which reveals for the first time that the ratio modulation between pulse width and pulse interval time within one spike cycle can result in both synaptic potentiation and depression effect within the same firing frequency. The impact of intrinsic neuronal noise on the STDP function of a single BFO artificial synapse can be neglected because thermal noise is two orders of magnitude smaller than the writing voltage and because the cycle-to-cycle variation of the current–voltage characteristics of a single BFO artificial synapses is small. However, extrinsic voltage fluctuations, e.g., in neural networks, cause a noisy input into the artificial synapses of the neural network. Here, the impact of extrinsic neuronal noise on the STDP function of a single BFO artificial synapse is analyzed in order to understand the robustness of plastic behavior in memristive artificial synapses against extrinsic noisy input.

2016, Fomin, Vladimir M., Schmidt, Oliver G., Bürger, Danilo, Lösch, Sören, Rezaev, Roman, Levchenko, Evgenii, Dusaev, Renat

Der Bericht enthält eine vollständige Beschreibung des wissenschaftlichen Forschungsprojekts, das durch die bilaterale BMBF-Russland-Forschungsförderung 01 DJ13009 finanziert wurde. Die Projektdauer wird in drei Perioden unterteilt, die jeweils dem Jahr der Umsetzung entsprechen. Die grundlegende Aufgabe des Projekts war es zu untersuchen, wie die Nanostrukturierung von Materialen die supraleitenden Eigenschaften ändert. Auf Basis der zeitabhängigen Ginzburg-Landau Theorie wurde das mathematische Modell der supraleitenden Phänomene in krummlinigen Nanostrukturen erstellt. Die Validierung des Modells wurde durch Vergleich mit verfügbaren experimentellen Daten für planare Strukturen durchgeführt. Weiterhin wurde das erarbeitete Modell zur Untersuchung der Wirbeldynamik in krummlinigen Nanostrukturen in einem Magnetfeld angewendet. Der Einfluss von Pinning-Zentren und die Dissipation der Energie in Abhängigkeit von den Randbedingungen wurden analysiert. Die im Rahmen des Projekts erhaltenen wissenschaftlichen Ergebnisse zeigen deutlich die Vorteile der gekrümmten supraleitenden Nanostrukturen in modernen Anwendungen der Supraleitung. Während des Projekts wurde eine innovative Software entwickelt, welche als Instrument für das virtuelle Design von Experimenten in supraleitenden gekrümmten Nano- und Mikrostrukturen genutzt werden kann.

2020, Rayapati, Venkata Rao, Bürger, Danilo, Du, Nan, Kowol, Cornelia, Blaschke, Daniel, Stöcker, Hartmut, Matthes, Patrick, Patra, Rajkumar, Skorupa, Ilona, Schulz, Stefan E., Schmidt, Heidemarie

We have investigated ferroelectric charged domains in polycrystalline hexagonal yttrium manganite thin films (Y1Mn1O3, Y0.95Mn1.05O3, Y1Mn0.99Ti0.01O3, and Y0.94Mn1.05Ti0.01O3) by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) in secondary electron emission mode with a small acceleration voltage. Using SEM at an acceleration voltage of 1.0 kV otherwise homogenous surface charging effects are reduced, polarization charges can be observed and polarization directions (±Pz) of the ferroelectric domains in the polycrystalline thin films can be identified. Thin films of different chemical composition have been deposited by pulsed laser deposition on Pt/SiO2/Si structures under otherwise same growth conditions. Using SEM it has been shown that different charged domain density networks are existing in polycrystalline yttrium manganite thin films. © 2020 IOP Publishing Ltd.

2019, Kiani, Mahdi, Du, Nan, Vogel, Manja, Raff, Johannes, Hübner, Uwe, Skorupa, Ilona, Bürger, Danilo, Schulz, Stefan E., Schmidt, Oliver G., Schmidt, Heidemarie

In this work, we report on the impedance of p-n junction-based Si biochips with gold ring top electrodes and unstructured platinum bottom electrodes which allows for counting target biomaterial in a liquid-filled ring top electrode region. The systematic experiments on p-n junction-based Si biochips fabricated by two different sets of implantation parameters (i.e. biochips PS5 and BS5) are studied, and the comparable significant change of impedance characteristics in the biochips in dependence on the number of bacteria suspension, i.e., Lysinibacillus sphaericus JG-A12, in Deionized water with an optical density at 600 nm from OD600 = 4–16 in the electrode ring region is demonstrated. Furthermore, with the help of the newly developed two-phase electrode structure, the modeled capacitance and resistance parameters of the electrical equivalent circuit describing the p-n junction-based biochips depend linearly on the number of bacteria in the ring top electrode region, which successfully proves the potential performance of p-n junction-based Si biochips in observing the bacterial suspension. The proposed p-n junction-based biochips reveal perspective applications in medicine and biology for diagnosis, monitoring, management, and treatment of diseases.In this work, we report on the impedance of p-n junction-based Si biochips with gold ring top electrodes and unstructured platinum bottom electrodes which allows for counting target biomaterial in a liquid-filled ring top electrode region. The systematic experiments on p-n junction-based Si biochips fabricated by two different sets of implantation parameters (i.e. biochips PS5 and BS5) are studied, and the comparable significant change of impedance characteristics in the biochips in dependence on the number of bacteria suspension, i.e., Lysinibacillus sphaericus JG-A12, in Deionized water with an optical density at 600 nm from OD600 = 4–16 in the electrode ring region is demonstrated. Furthermore, with the help of the newly developed two-phase electrode structure, the modeled capacitance and resistance parameters of the electrical equivalent circuit describing the p-n junction-based biochips depend linearly on the number of bacteria in the ring top electrode region, which successfully proves the potential performance of p-n junction-based Si biochips in observing the bacterial suspension. The proposed p-n junction-based biochips reveal perspective applications in medicine and biology for diagnosis, monitoring, management, and treatment of diseases.

2015, Du, Nan, Kiani, Mahdi, Mayr, Christian G., You, Tiangui, Bürger, Danilo, Skorupa, Ilona, Schmidt, Oliver G., Schmidt, Heidemarie

Memristive devices are popular among neuromorphic engineers for their ability to emulate forms of spike-driven synaptic plasticity by applying specific voltage and current waveforms at their two terminals. In this paper, we investigate spike-timing dependent plasticity (STDP) with a single pairing of one presynaptic voltage spike and one post-synaptic voltage spike in a BiFeO3 memristive device. In most memristive materials the learning window is primarily a function of the material characteristics and not of the applied waveform. In contrast, we show that the analog resistive switching of the developed artificial synapses allows to adjust the learning time constant of the STDP function from 25 ms to 125 μs via the duration of applied voltage spikes. Also, as the induced weight change may degrade, we investigate the remanence of the resistance change for several hours after analog resistive switching, thus emulating the processes expected in biological synapses. As the power consumption is a major constraint in neuromorphic circuits, we show methods to reduce the consumed energy per setting pulse to only 4.5 pJ in the developed artificial synapses.

2015, You, Tiangui, Ou, Xin, Niu, Gang, Bärwolf, Florian, Li, Guodong, Du, Nan, Bürger, Danilo, Skorupa, Ilona, Jia, Qi, Yu, Wenjie, Wang, Xi, Schmidt, Oliver G., Schmidt, Heidemarie

BiFeO3 based MIM structures with Ti-implanted Pt bottom electrodes and Au top electrodes have been fabricated on Sapphire substrates. The resulting metal-insulator-metal (MIM) structures show bipolar resistive switching without an electroforming process. It is evidenced that during the BiFeO3 thin film growth Ti diffuses into the BiFeO3 layer. The diffused Ti effectively traps and releases oxygen vacancies and consequently stabilizes the resistive switching in BiFeO3 MIM structures. Therefore, using Ti implantation of the bottom electrode, the retention performance can be greatly improved with increasing Ti fluence. For the used raster-scanned Ti implantation the lateral Ti distribution is not homogeneous enough and endurance slightly degrades with Ti fluence. The local resistive switching investigated by current sensing atomic force microscopy suggests the capability of down-scaling the resistive switching cell to one BiFeO3 grain size by local Ti implantation of the bottom electrode.