Oxide‐Based Electrolyte‐Gated Transistors for Spatiotemporal Information Processing

Abstract

Spiking neural networks (SNNs) sharing large similarity with biological nervous systems are promising to process spatiotemporal information and can provide highly time- and energy-efficient computational paradigms for the Internet-of-Things and edge computing. Nonvolatile electrolyte-gated transistors (EGTs) provide prominent analog switching performance, the most critical feature of synaptic element, and have been recently demonstrated as a promising synaptic device. However, high performance, large-scale EGT arrays, and EGT application for spatiotemporal information processing in an SNN are yet to be demonstrated. Here, an oxide-based EGT employing amorphous Nb2O5 and LixSiO2 is introduced as the channel and electrolyte gate materials, respectively, and integrated into a 32 × 32 EGT array. The engineered EGTs show a quasi-linear update, good endurance (106) and retention, a high switching speed of 100 ns, ultralow readout conductance (<100 nS), and ultralow areal switching energy density (20 fJ µm−2). The prominent analog switching performance is leveraged for hardware implementation of an SNN with the capability of spatiotemporal information processing, where spike sequences with different timings are able to be efficiently learned and recognized by the EGT array. Finally, this EGT-based spatiotemporal information processing is deployed to detect moving orientation in a tactile sensing system. These results provide an insight into oxide-based EGT devices for energy-efficient neuromorphic computing to support edge application.