Ohio State Researchers Built Memory Chips From Fungi
The prototype memristors represent a potential shift toward organic, biodegradable computing components.
Updated on Sept. 21, 2026 in Semiconductors
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Researchers at The Ohio State University have successfully created memory chips using shiitake and button mushroom mycelium. This research-stage development serves as an alternative to traditional silicon-based components to address e-waste and power consumption.
Why it matters
The electronics industry is exploring organic substrates to combat high power consumption and mounting electronic waste. With data center energy usage projected to reach up to 12% by 2028, these findings provide a trajectory for more sustainable hardware architectures.
The mushroom memristors achieved a 90% accuracy rate at switching speeds of up to 5,850 Hz. These figures highlight the capability of mycelial substrates to function as computational media, remaining operational even after the dehydration process.
The players
The Ohio State University
A public research institution currently exploring organic substrates for more sustainable electronic components.
Leon Chua
An electrical engineer who theoretically predicted the memristor in 1971.
Andrew Adamatzky
A researcher known for his foundational work on using biological organisms for fungal computing.
The details
The team created these memristors—components that track the amount of electrical charge that has flowed through them—by utilizing mycelial structures as a computational medium to perform logic operations. By leveraging the physical properties of the fungal network, the researchers successfully integrated organic materials into a circuit architecture. The result is a device that mimics the function of synthetic semiconductor memory but relies on biological tissue instead of traditional minerals.
Timeline
1971: Leon Chua predicted the existence of the memristor.
2008: Stanley Williams demonstrated the first physical memristor.
2018: Andrew Adamatzky published initial research on fungal computing.
2022: The world generated 68 million short tons of electronic waste.
2023: Data centers consumed 4.4% of national electricity.
The Tech Race
This development moves the field of fungal computing from conceptual modeling to functional chip architecture. It directly addresses the trajectory of research pioneered by Andrew Adamatzky, establishing a new hardware milestone for organic circuitry.
This technology remains in the research phase and is not currently available for commercial computing workflows. The team now plans to focus on miniaturizing the chips and improving consistency across different fungal samples.
The takeaway
This study demonstrates that biological materials can perform logic operations previously reserved for synthetic materials. Readers should track future miniaturization benchmarks as the team works to improve performance consistency across cultures.
Further reading
For more on the latest research in this field, visit our dedicated page on Semiconductors.
Source note: This article includes information reported by Earth.
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Should the electronics industry prioritize biodegradable substrates like fungi to reduce electronic waste?
