Multivalued Logic for Optical Computing with Photonically Enabled Chiral Bio-organic Structures.

Photonic bio-organic multiphase structures are suggested here for integrated thin-film electronic nets with multilevel logic elements for multilevel computing via a reconfigurable photonic bandgap of chiral biomaterials. Herein, inspired by an artificial intelligence system with efficient information integration and computing capability, the photonically active dielectric layer of chiral nematic cellulose nanocrystals is combined with printed-in p- and n-type organic semiconductors as a bifunctional logical element. These adaptive logic elements are capable of triggering tailored quantized electrical output signals under light with different photon energy and at the different photonic bandgaps of the active dielectric layer. The bifunctional structures enable complex memory behavior upon repetitive changes of photonic bandgap (controlled by expansion/contraction of chiral nematic pitch) and photon energy (controlled by light absorption wavelength of complementary organic semiconductor layers), exhibiting effectively a reconfigurable ternary logic response. This proof-of-concept bio-assisted multivalued logic structure facilitates an optical computing system for low-power optical information processing integrated with human-machine interfaces.