The Crystal Computer - Computing with Inorganic Cellular Frameworks and Nets

The Crystal Computer - Computing with Inorganic Cellular Frameworks and Nets

Mark D. Symes, Leroy Cronin
Copyright: © 2011 |Pages: 11
DOI: 10.4018/jnmc.2011010103
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Abstract

The enormous potential of parallel computing has led to the first prototype devices being constructed. However, all the examples to date rely on complicated chemical and/or physical manipulations, and hence do not lend themselves to the kind of widespread investigation necessary to advance the field. This article presents a new paradigm for parallel computing: the use of solid, single crystalline materials as cellular automata suggesting the idea of the “Crystal Computer,” now possible due to a new class of crystalline cellular materials that undergo single-crystal-to-single-crystal (SC-SC) oxidation and reduction (REDOX) reactions. Two avenues are proposed for investigation: reversible single-crystal to single-crystal electronic transformations and solid-state spin transfer within spin-crossover complexes. Both schemes allow computation to occur in three dimensions, within cheap and easy to assemble materials and using commonplace techniques for input and readout.
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Crystal Computing With Polyoxometalates

Crystals of the form [(C4H10NO)40(W72M12O268Si7)]·48H2O (M = MnIII) (1ox) self-assemble from a solution of the well-studied tungsten polyoxometalate [γ-SiW10O36]8- and a simple manganese(II) salt and hence are straightforward to prepare. The structure of these crystals comprises an infinite array of 3- and 4-connected Keggin polyanions (Long et al., 2010), where each three connected unit is surrounded by three neighboring clusters in a trigonal-planar fashion, and each 4-connected unit features four nearest neighbors located on the vertices of a distorted tetrahedron (Figure 1).

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