Electrical and electronic engineering articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    It is challenging to create efficient and compact neuromorphic sensory system based on nano-scale nonlinear dynamics. Yang et al. present a capacitance-coupled VO2 oscillatory network, which serves as a continuous-time dynamic system for sensory pre-processing, enabling tasks such as touch and gesture recognition.

    • Ke Yang
    • , Yanghao Wang
    •  & Yuchao Yang
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Authors showcase a framework for visual perception enhancement system based on vision-driven metasurfaces. It can help humans obtain information in multiple frequency bands and allows the metasurface platform with more interesting functions.

    • Tianshuo Qiu
    • , Qiang An
    •  & Shaobo Qu
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Interfacing living systems with electronics for biosensing and biocomputing applications is challenging. Here, Gao et al. present hybrid transistors with electroactive bacteria capable of extracellular electron transfer, enabling transduction of biological computations to electrical readouts.

    • Yang Gao
    • , Yuchen Zhou
    •  & Benjamin K. Keitz
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Loss of communication between the brain and the body severely impacts the sensorimotor abilities of disabled individuals. Here, the authors design and test a neuroscience-driven framework for advancing bionic devices that leverages biomimetic stimulation to induce physiologically plausible information flow in animals and enhances patient performance with neuroprostheses.

    • Giacomo Valle
    • , Natalija Katic Secerovic
    •  & Stanisa Raspopovic
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Fe3GaTe2 is a van der Waals material with a Curie temperature well above room temperature, making it an attractive material for integration into spintronic devices. Here, Kajale et al demonstrate spin-orbit torque induced switching of the magnetization of Fe3GaTe2, above room temperature, using a Pt spin Hall layer.

    • Shivam N. Kajale
    • , Thanh Nguyen
    •  & Deblina Sarkar
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Frequency converters for wireless internet of things applications typically require separate circuits for different functions, causing energy and performance inefficiencies. Using an epitaxially grown VO2 memristor array, Liu et al. present a frequency converter with in-situ frequency synthesis and mix functionality.

    • Chang Liu
    • , Pek Jun Tiw
    •  & Yuchao Yang
  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors showcase a video-rate hyperspectral imager based on a single-pixel photodetector that can achieve high-throughput hyperspectral video recording at a low bandwidth. Specifically, they propose a joint spatial-spectral encoding scheme which can encode the scene into highly compressed single-pixel measurements and obtain temporal correlation at the same time.

    • Yibo Xu
    • , Liyang Lu
    •  & Kevin F. Kelly
  • Article
    | Open Access

    The Authors report a novel architecture of photonic beamformer capable of achieving broadband operation and a high number of pointing angles. We demonstrate the operation of a 5-bit beamformer capable of providing 32 pointing angles in the 10−30 GHz range.

    • Pablo Martinez-Carrasco
    • , Tan Huy Ho
    •  & José Capmany
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Stretchable sensor networks with multiplexing designs can result in misrecognition due to electrical signal interferences from the sensing nodes and internal circuits. Here, Shao et al. show an untethered triboelectric electronic skin with an elastic composite-based shield layer for lower misrecognition rate.

    • Beibei Shao
    • , Ming-Han Lu
    •  & Ying-Chih Lai
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Sensitivity-dependent data analysis methods disrupted the development of artificial olfactory technologies. Here, authors present a data-centric artificial olfactory system based on eigengraph that reflects the intrinsic electrochemical interaction.

    • Seung-Hyun Sung
    • , Jun Min Suh
    •  & Seong Chan Jun
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Waterproof flexible organic solar cells without compromising mechanical flexibility and conformability remains challenging. Here, the authors demonstrate in-situ growth of hole-transporting layer to strengthen interfacial and thermodynamic adhesion for better waterproofness in 3 μm-thick devices.

    • Sixing Xiong
    • , Kenjiro Fukuda
    •  & Takao Someya
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Adaptive tactile interactions transfer across users, space, and time, via embroidered smart gloves is reported by the authors. The scalable fabrication and adaptive computation pipeline enable tactile occlusion alleviation, human skills transfer, and interactive teleoperation.

    • Yiyue Luo
    • , Chao Liu
    •  & Wojciech Matusik
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Encoding and downsampling images is key for visual prostheses. Here, the authors show that an actor-model framework using the inherent computation of the retinal network yields better performance in downsampling images compared to learning-free methods.

    • Franklin Leong
    • , Babak Rahmani
    •  & Diego Ghezzi
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Inspired by insects in nature, the authors develop a neuromorphic robotic system with obstacle avoidance, tunnel centering and gap crossing capabilities. Their robotic system accomplishes these multiple capabilities by steering towards regions of low apparent motion.

    • Thorben Schoepe
    • , Ella Janotte
    •  & Elisabetta Chicca
  • Perspective
    | Open Access

    In order to complete the transition to the era of large-scale integration, silicon photonics will have to overcome several challenges. Here, the authors outline what these challenges are and what it will take to tackle them.

    • Sudip Shekhar
    • , Wim Bogaerts
    •  & Bhavin J. Shastri
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Existing neuromorphic hardware, focusing mainly on shallow-reservoir computing, is challenged in providing adequate spatial and temporal scales characteristic for effective computing. Here, Gao et al. report an ultra-short channel organic neuromorphic vertical transistor with distributed reservoir states.

    • Changsong Gao
    • , Di Liu
    •  & Huipeng Chen
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Organic neural implants hold considerable promise for biocompatible neural interfaces. Here, the authors employ polymer-based organic electrochemical diodes and transistors to develop neuron-sized complex circuits, enabling multiplexing without crosstalk and demonstrate that, when integrated onto ultra-thin plastic, these circuits achieve high performance while maintaining minimal invasiveness.

    • Ilke Uguz
    • , David Ohayon
    •  & Kenneth L. Shepard
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Harvesting biomechanical energy from cardiac motion is an attractive power source for implantable bioelectronic devices. Here, the authors report a battery-free, transcatheter, self-powered intracardiac pacemaker for the treatment of arrhythmia in large animal models.

    • Zhuo Liu
    • , Yiran Hu
    •  & Zhong Lin Wang
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Thermistors typically read at DC or low frequencies have limited temperature-sensing ranges. Here, authors show how a radio frequency readout can overcome the decades-old range limitation of thermistors, while creating a wireless interface for a soft thermistor composite through antennas and RFID.

    • Mahmoud Wagih
    • , Junjie Shi
    •  & Steve Beeby
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ambiguity in human-oriented traffic laws poses a significant challenge to the regulation of self-driving vehicles. Here, the authors present a trigger-based hierarchical online compliance monitor for self-assessment of self-driving vehicles using ambiguous compliance threshold selection principles.

    • Wenhao Yu
    • , Chengxiang Zhao
    •  & Ding Zhao
  • Article
    | Open Access

    While federated learning is promising for efficient collaborative learning without revealing local data, it remains vulnerable to white-box privacy attacks, suffers from high communication overhead, and struggles to adapt to heterogeneous models. Here, the authors show a federated distillation method to tackle these challenges, which leverages the strengths of knowledge distillation in a federated learning setting.

    • Jiawei Shao
    • , Fangzhao Wu
    •  & Jun Zhang
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Timely detection of moving events in a scene plays a vital role in autonomous robots. In this work, authors develop a method to detect moving events from lidar points, achieving a temporal resolution in the order of microseconds.

    • Huajie Wu
    • , Yihang Li
    •  & Fu Zhang
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Metasurfaces show variable scattering with frequency sequence. This frequency-hopping response breaks a conventional linear frequency concept and markedly expands available frequency channels from a linear number to its factorial number.

    • Hiroki Takeshita
    • , Ashif Aminulloh Fathnan
    •  & Hiroki Wakatsuchi
  • Article
    | Open Access

    The simultaneous scaling down of the channel length and gate length of 2D transistors remains challenging. Here, the authors report a self-alignment process to fabricate vertical MoS2 transistors with sub-1 nm gate length and sub−50 nm channel length, exhibiting on-off ratios over 105 and on-state currents of 250 μA/μm at 4 V bias.

    • Liting Liu
    • , Yang Chen
    •  & Yuan Liu
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Although artificial skins can facilitate the healing of damaged skin, the restoration of tactile functions remain a challenge. Here, Kang et al. report an artificial skin with an implantable tactile sensor that can simultaneously replace the tactile function by nerve stimulation and promote skin regeneration.

    • Kyowon Kang
    • , Seongryeol Ye
    •  & Youngmee Jung
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Designing efficient artificial neural network circuit architectures for optimal information routing remains a challenge. Here, the authors propose “Mosaic", the first demonstration of on-chip in-memory spike routing using memristors, optimized for small-world graphs prevalent in mammalian brains, offering orders of magnitude reduction in routing events compared to current approaches.

    • Thomas Dalgaty
    • , Filippo Moro
    •  & Melika Payvand
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Designing memristor-integrated passive crossbar arrays to accelerate artificial neural networks with high reliability remains a challenge. Here, the authors propose a self-rectifying resistive switching device incorporated into a crossbar array with a density of 1 kb whose operational performance is assessed in terms of defected-cell proportion, reading margin, and selection functionality.

    • Kanghyeok Jeon
    • , Jin Joo Ryu
    •  & Gun Hwan Kim
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Existing solutions based Advanced Encryption Standard to address the security issues of nonvolatile memories incurs significant performance and power overhead. Here, the authors propose a lightweight XOR-gate based encryption/decryption technique by exploiting in-situ array operations, which achieves significant area/latency/power reduction compared to conventional designs.

    • Yixin Xu
    • , Yi Xiao
    •  & Kai Ni
  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors demonstrate real-time blind photonic interference cancellation using FPGA-photonic coordinated processing with zero calibration micro-ring resonator control and sub-second cancellation weight identification.

    • Joshua C. Lederman
    • , Weipeng Zhang
    •  & Paul R. Prucnal
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Neural networks are powerful tools for solving complex problems, but finding the right network topology for a given task remains an open question. Here, the authors propose a bio-inspired artificial neural network hardware able to self-adapt to solve new complex tasks, by autonomously connecting nodes using electropolymerization.

    • Kamila Janzakova
    • , Ismael Balafrej
    •  & Fabien Alibart
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Reconfigurable modules have the potential to increase the energy yield of partially shaded photovoltaic systems. Here, the authors present outdoor test results of a full-scale prototype that can produce over 10% more energy than a module with fixed interconnections and six bypass diodes.

    • Andres Calcabrini
    • , Mirco Muttillo
    •  & Olindo Isabella
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Methods for the wireless, continuous monitoring and analysis of activities directly from the throat skin have not been developed. Here, the authors present a stretchable device platform that provides wireless measurements and machine learning-based analysis of vibrations and muscle electrical activities from the throat.

    • Hongcheng Xu
    • , Weihao Zheng
    •  & Libo Gao
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Transfer printing of inorganic semiconductors is essential for high-performance flexible electronics. Here, Park et al. report the micro-vacuum assisted selective transfer to integrate inorganic thin-film semiconductors on unusual substrates.

    • Sang Hyun Park
    • , Tae Jin Kim
    •  & Keon Jae Lee