Evolution of Electronic Circuits using Carbon Nanotube Composites

Abstract

Evolution-in-materio concerns the computer controlled manipulation of material systems using external stimuli to train or evolve the material to perform a useful function. In this paper we demonstrate the evolution of a disordered composite material, using voltages as the external stimuli, into a form where a simple computational problem can be solved. The material consists of single-walled carbon nanotubes suspended in liquid crystal; the nanotubes act as a conductive network, with the liquid crystal providing a host medium to allow the conductive network to reorganise when voltages are applied. We show that the application of electric fields under computer control results in a significant change in the material morphology, favouring the solution to a classification task.