Propagation and spatiotemporal summation of electrical pulses in semiconductor nerve fibers

The authors report the propagation and analog summation of electrical impulses in artificial nerve fibers made of submicron p-n wires. These wires model the longitudinal conductivities of K+ and Na+ ions inside and outside a nerve capillary as well as the transverse capacitance of the nerve membrane and the nonlinear conductance of its ion channels. They demonstrate the summation and annihilation of electrical impulses at room temperature which form the basis for making spike timing neural networks. (C) 2007 American Institute of Physics.