Maker Faire 2026: Jelly Bean Bit Memristors

For my Senior Year MakerFaire project, I had the pleasure of working with Phoebe Kim (again!) on a Biodegradable Memristor project. This year, I wanted to push into neuromorphic computing- building artificial synapses that mimic how neurons actually learn. We fabricated memristive devices using silver and TiO2 electrodes with a gelatin-NaCl ionic switching layer, all hand-painted onto cardstock instead of expensive specialized substrates, making the whole batch nearly disposable and biodegradable. Each device cost about $0.0015 in materials.

For the demo, we built a Pavlov's dog associative learning circuit using two of our devices and an Arduino. Although it didn't work as intended, considering the fact that in the process of making these devices we also made a low cost spin coater, I'd say mission accomplished. Also, given how expensive and resource-intensive most neuromorphic hardware research is, we wanted to show that low-cost, sustainable materials could still produce memristive switching behavior — flipping the usual assumption that cutting-edge hardware has to come at a high material or environmental cost. You can see our project in depth below!!

Gantt Chart