The tiny transistor is the heart of the electronics revolution, and Penn State materials scientists have just discovered a way to give this workhorse a big boost, using a new technique to incorporate vanadium oxide -- a functional oxide -- into the electronic devices.

"It's tough to replace current transistor technology because semiconductors do such a fantastic job," said Roman Engel-Herbert, assistant professor of materials science and engineering. "But there are some materials, like vanadium oxide, that you can add to existing devices to make them perform even better."

The researchers knew that vanadium dioxide, which is just a specific combination of the elements vanadium and oxygen, had an unusual property called the metal-to-insulator transition. In the metal state, electrons move freely, while in the insulator state, electrons cannot flow. This on/off transition, inherent to vanadium dioxide, is also the basis of computer logic and memory.

Adam Smith, associate professor of computer science and engineering in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer
Science, has received a grant from Google to investigate privacy issues in a state-of-the-art training technique called deep learning. The grant, which is shared with Vitaly Shmatikov at Cornell, will support investigations into what deep learning systems can leak about sensitive inputs, as well as the development of a system for privacy-preserving deep learning.

Google Faculty Research Awards support cutting-edge research in computer science, computer engineering, and related fields. Approximately 200 grants are awarded globally each year. Smith and Shmatikov will share their results with relevant research groups at Google and have opportunities to collaborate with those groups, but all the products of the research will be publicly available.

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