Thermal Computing with Mechanical Transistors

Mechanical computing has garnered significant interest as a supplement to traditional electronic computing, which often grapples with issues like high power consumption, security vulnerabilities, and susceptibility to extreme environmental conditions such as intense heat and radiation. Yet, most research in mechanical computing has been limited to the ad hoc design of simple logic gates and has not fully achieved the implementation of simple arithmetic computation within an electricity-free framework. Additionally, progress in environmentally adaptive computing, crucial for decentralized intelligence, has also been slow. New ground is broken with the development of a mechanical transistor that synergizes a Kirigami thermomechanical sensor and a bistable actuator, enabling in-memory computing for combinational and sequential logic. The design stands out by employing modular construction, symmetry breaking, and nonlinear materials, crafting logic gates, and memory units that respond to environmental stimuli through thermal delay. These transistors integrate design and material intelligence to establish nonvolatile memories, essential for logic-in-memory, and align thermal transport with mechanical deformation for environmental responsiveness. The mechanical transistor heralds a new age in mechanical computing, proving to be as versatile and vital as the electronic transistor has been in the era of modern computing. This study introduces a mechanical transistor merging a Kirigami thermomechanical sensor with a soft bistable actuator featuring multi-variable terminals. The design integrates modular construction, symmetry breaking, and nonlinear materials to build logic gates, volatile memory, and non-volatile memory units. This work also achieves environmentally responsive computing that accounts for sequential thermal signal delays by synchronizing thermal transport with thermomechanical deformation. image