Honey could be used to make biodegradable, brain-like computer chip: study

In this May 21, 2008 file photo, honey bees sit on a honeycomb in Germany. (AP Photo/Heribert Proepper, File)

A new study suggests honey could be used to make a brain-like computer chip to process and store data.

Published in last month's issue of Journal of Physics D, the study suggests honey can be used to make a memristor, a contraction of the term "memory resistor."

Currently, computers run on much more energy than the human brain, especially when it comes to data processing and storage. In a computer, energy must go to different parts of the computer to run processing, memory, and displays. But in a brain, each neuron, or nerve cell, can do processing or hold memory. So computer scientists around the world are working to create futuristic computers, or neuromorphic computers, that behave like the human nervous system and can run on less energy.

For the study, researchers processed honey into a solid form and placed it between two metal electrodes to mimic a human synapse, which is the small pocket of space between two neruons where information is passed from one to the other. The honey memristor was able to mimic synapses in testing with a high switching speed, or the amount of time it takes for an electronic device to respond to changes at its input.

Researchers built the honey memristor to be about the same width as a human hair. In order for the memristor to work, however, it would need to be built on a nanoscale, or about 1/1000th the size of a human hair. Then, according to Feng Zhao, a professor at Washington State Univerity's School of Engineering and Computer Science and author of the study, billions of them would be bundled together in order to run a completely neuromorphic computer system.

Some companies, including IBM and Intel, have already made neuromorphic computer chips, which have around 100 million neurons per chip, but they are still not as numerous as the human brain. The human brain has more than 100 billion neurons, with more than 1,000 trillion synapses.

On top of that, many memristors currently on the market are made out of non-renewable and even toxic materials. Zhao said he hopes honey could be a biodegradable and renewable option in this emerging field of research and technological development.

"Honey does not spoil," Zhao said in a press release on Tuesday. "It has a very low moisture concentration, so bacteria cannot survive in it. This means these computer chips will be very stable and reliable for a very long time."

Researchers also noted that because they run on less energy, neuromorphic systems won't get as hot as tradition computers, meaning the honey isn't likely to melt when heated. But Zhao said honey can be disposed of safely in another way that reduces electronic waste.

"When we want to dispose of devices using computer chips made of honey, we can easily dissolve them in water," he said. "Because of these special properties, honey is very useful for creating renewable and biodegradable neuromorphic systems."

But because it is water soluable, Zhao joked, the honey memristor could still malfunction just like a regular computer if you spill coffee on it.