TEHRAN - Mohammad Samizadeh Nikoo is a last-year Ph.D.

student at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland.

He found that Vanadium Dioxide is a material that is normally insulating (does not conduct electricity), but when it receives a certain electric current, it undergoes a phase transition and becomes a conductor (like copper).He observed that the time it takes for the Vanadium Dioxide to switch from the insulating to the conducting state heavily depends on the history of the materials.

Thus, it looks like the material remembers its history!In an exclusive interview with the Tehran Times, Samizadeh Nikoo expounded on his life, career, and achievements.Q: First of all, please tell us about yourself, your educational background, and your current fields of activity.My name is Mohammad Samizadeh Nikoo, and I am a last-year Ph.D.

student at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland.

My current research interest is to use new (or rather unexplored) physics to realize novel functional devices.I had my bachelor's and master's studies in Electrical Engineering at the Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran.

During my master's study, I worked on electrical solitons and pulsed power.Vanadium oxide can exhibit a neuron-like activation, meaning it can pass electric current under certain conditions which are very similar to neurons.Q: What is the definition of smart materials and when was it first introduced in the world?Smart materials are able to reversibly respond to one or more environmental stimuli, such as chemical, electrical, light, temperature, and mechanical.

Smart materials are quite broad, so it is difficult to introduce the very first one.

But piezoelectric materials that produce a voltage when stress is applied, are certainly among the oldest.

The Curie brothers discovered the piezoelectricity of minerals like this in 1880.Q: Are smart materials just used in laboratories or have functions in our daily life?Yes, indeed we use functional materials for a wide range of applications including sensors, actuators, and energy sources.

For instance, we use photovoltaic materials to generate electricity from light and piezoelectric in several types of igniters.

But what could be much more interesting is to use the intrinsic features of smart materials to store and process information.

This could change the way we make data processors today and can lead to computers that outperform what we have today.Q: Would you please explain the discovery in simple words and describe its effect on the development of sciences?Vanadium Dioxide is a material that is normally insulating (does not conduct electricity, like a piece of glass), but when it receives a certain electric current, it undergoes a phase transition and becomes a conductor (like copper).

We observed that the time it takes for the Vanadium Dioxide to switch from the insulating to the conducting state heavily depends on the history of the materials.

It looks like the material remembers its history!This behavior indicated that Vanadium oxide can exhibit a neuron-like activation, meaning it can pass electric current under certain conditions which are very similar to neurons.

We didn’t expect to see this kind of memory effect, and it has nothing to do with electronic states but rather with the physical structure of the material.

It’s a novel discovery: no other material behaves in this wayThe discovery is important because engineers rely on memory to perform calculations of all kinds, and materials offering greater capacity, speed, and miniaturization in this process are in high demand.

VO2 now appears to tick all three of these boxes.

More importantly, the material behaves similarly to neurons which enables the implementation of brain-like computers which can solve problems that are fundamentally challenging for binary processors.Q: Is it also possible to carry out such kinds of research in Iran?Such research is multidisciplinary in nature.

It respectively relies on material scientists, nanotechnology experts, and electrical engineers to synthesize high-quality Vanadium Dioxide, fabricate neuron-like devices on small scales, and electrically operate the system for data storage or processing purposes.

Although Iranian universities are not generally advanced in nanotechnology, I do know at least two laboratories at the Sharif University of Technology and Tehran Universe that are capable of doing that.

So, such research is in principle possible.