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1. Charge‐Density‐Wave Resistive Switching and Voltage Oscillations in Ternary Chalcogenide BaTiS 3

   https://doi.org/10.1002/aelm.202300461  

   Chen, Huandong ; Wang, Nan ; Liu, Hefei ; Wang, Han ; Ravichandran, Jayakanth ( September 2023 , Advanced Electronic Materials)

   Phase change materials, which show different electrical characteristics across the phase transitions, have attracted considerable research attention for their potential electronic device applications. Materials with metal‐to‐insulator or charge density wave (CDW) transitions such as VO₂and 1T‐TaS₂have demonstrated voltage oscillations due to their robust bi‐state resistive switching behavior with some basic neuronal characteristics. BaTiS₃is a small bandgap ternary chalcogenide that has recently reported the emergence of CDW order below 245 K. Here, the discovery of DC voltage / current‐induced reversible threshold switching in BaTiS₃devices between a CDW phase and a room temperature semiconducting phase is reported. The resistive switching behavior is consistent with a Joule heating scheme and sustained voltage oscillations with a frequency of up to 1 kHz are demonstrated by leveraging the CDW phase transition and the associated negative differential resistance. Strategies of reducing channel sizes and improving thermal management may further improve the device's performance. The findings establish BaTiS₃as a promising CDW material for future electronic device applications, especially for energy‐efficient neuromorphic computing.

    

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2. Physical Origin of Negative Differential Resistance in V 3 O 5 and Its Application as a Solid‐State Oscillator

   https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.202208477  

   Das, Sujan Kumar ; Nandi, Sanjoy Kumar ; Marquez, Camilo Verbel ; Rúa, Armando ; Uenuma, Mutsunori ; Puyoo, Etienne ; Nath, Shimul Kanti ; Albertini, David ; Baboux, Nicolas ; Lu, Teng ; et al ( December 2022 , Advanced Materials)

   Oxides that exhibit an insulator–metal transition can be used to fabricate energy‐efficient relaxation oscillators for use in hardware‐based neural networks but there are very few oxides with transition temperatures above room temperature. Here the structural, electrical, and thermal properties of V₃O₅thin films and their application as the functional oxide in metal/oxide/metal relaxation oscillators are reported. The V₃O₅devices show electroforming‐free volatile threshold switching and negative differential resistance (NDR) with stable (<3% variation) cycle‐to‐cycle operation. The physical mechanisms underpinning these characteristics are investigated using a combination of electrical measurements, in situ thermal imaging, and device modeling. This shows that conduction is confined to a narrow filamentary path due to self‐confinement of the current distribution and that the NDR response is initiated at temperatures well below the insulator–metal transition temperature where it is dominated by the temperature‐dependent conductivity of the insulating phase. Finally, the dynamics of individual and coupled V₃O₅‐based relaxation oscillators is reported, showing that capacitively coupled devices exhibit rich non‐linear dynamics, including frequency and phase synchronization. These results establish V₃O₅as a new functional material for volatile threshold switching and advance the development of robust solid‐state neurons for neuromorphic computing.

    

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3. Organic Electrochemical Transistors Based on the Conjugated Polyelectrolyte PCPDTBT‐SO 3 K (CPE‐K)

   https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.201908120  

   Lill, Alexander T. ; Cao, David X. ; Schrock, Max ; Vollbrecht, Joachim ; Huang, Jianfei ; Nguyen‐Dang, Tung ; Brus, Viktor V. ; Yurash, Brett ; Leifert, Dirk ; Bazan, Guillermo C. ; et al ( July 2020 , Advanced Materials)

   PCPDTBT‐SO₃K (CPE‐K), a conjugated polyelectrolyte, is presented as a mixed conductor material that can be used to fabricate high transconductance accumulation mode organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs). OECTs are utilized in a wide range of applications such as analyte detection, neural interfacing, impedance sensing, and neuromorphic computing. The use of interdigitated contacts to enable high transconductance in a relatively small device area in comparison to standard contacts is demonstrated. Such characteristics are highly desired in applications such as neural‐activity sensing, where the device area must be minimized to reduce invasiveness. The physical and electrical properties of CPE‐K are fully characterized to allow a direct comparison to other top performing OECT materials. CPE‐K demonstrates an electrical performance that is among the best reported in the literature for OECT materials. In addition, CPE‐K OECTs operate in the accumulation mode, which allows for much lower energy consumption in comparison to commonly used depletion mode devices.

    

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4. Harnessing the Metal–Insulator Transition of VO 2 in Neuromorphic Computing

   https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.202205294  

   Schofield, Parker ; Bradicich, Adelaide ; Gurrola, Rebeca M. ; Zhang, Yuwei ; Brown, Timothy D. ; Pharr, Matt ; Shamberger, Patrick J. ; Banerjee, Sarbajit ( November 2022 , Advanced Materials)

   Future‐generation neuromorphic computing seeks to overcome the limitations of von Neumann architectures by colocating logic and memory functions, thereby emulating the function of neurons and synapses in the human brain. Despite remarkable demonstrations of high‐fidelity neuronal emulation, the predictive design of neuromorphic circuits starting from knowledge of material transformations remains challenging. VO₂is an attractive candidate since it manifests a near‐room‐temperature, discontinuous, and hysteretic metal–insulator transition. The transition provides a nonlinear dynamical response to input signals, as needed to construct neuronal circuit elements. Strategies for tuning the transformation characteristics of VO₂based on modification of material properties, interfacial structure, and field couplings, are discussed. Dynamical modulation of transformation characteristics through in situ processing is discussed as a means of imbuing synaptic function. Mechanistic understanding of site‐selective modification; external, epitaxial, and chemical strain; defect dynamics; and interfacial field coupling in modifying local atomistic structure, the implications therein for electronic structure, and ultimately, the tuning of transformation characteristics, is emphasized. Opportunities are highlighted for inverse design and for using design principles related to thermodynamics and kinetics of electronic transitions learned from VO₂to inform the design of new Mott materials, as well as to go beyond energy‐efficient computation to manifest intelligence.

    

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5. (Digital Presentation) Oxide Memristors Based on SiO 2 with Cu/Ag Alloy Metallization for Neuromorphic Computing

   https://doi.org/10.1149/MA2022-0215808mtgabs  

   Qin, Fei ; Song, Han Wook ; Qin, Fei ( October 2022 , ECS Meeting Abstracts)

   By mimicking biomimetic synaptic processes, the success of artificial intelligence (AI) has been astounding with various applications such as driving automation, big data analysis, and natural-language processing.[1-4] Due to a large quantity of data transmission between the separated memory unit and the logic unit, the classical computing system with von Neumann architecture consumes excessive energy and has a significant processing delay.[5] Furthermore, the speed difference between the two units also causes extra delay, which is referred to as the memory wall.[6, 7] To keep pace with the rapid growth of AI applications, enhanced hardware systems that particularly feature an energy-efficient and high-speed hardware system need to be secured. The novel neuromorphic computing system, an in-memory architecture with low power consumption, has been suggested as an alternative to the conventional system. Memristors with analog-type resistive switching behavior are a promising candidate for implementing the neuromorphic computing system since the devices can modulate the conductance with cycles that act as synaptic weights to process input signals and store information.[8, 9]

   The memristor has sparked tremendous interest due to its simple two-terminal structure, including top electrode (TE), bottom electrode (BE), and an intermediate resistive switching (RS) layer. Many oxide materials, including HfO₂, Ta₂O₅, and IGZO, have extensively been studied as an RS layer of memristors. Silicon dioxide (SiO₂) features 3D structural conformity with the conventional CMOS technology and high wafer-scale homogeneity, which has benefited modern microelectronic devices as dielectric and/or passivation layers. Therefore, the use of SiO₂as a memristor RS layer for neuromorphic computing is expected to be compatible with current Si technology with minimal processing and material-related complexities.

   In this work, we proposed SiO₂-based memristor and investigated switching behaviors metallized with different reduction potentials by applying pure Cu and Ag, and their alloys with varied ratios. Heavily doped p-type silicon was chosen as BE in order to exclude any effects of the BE ions on the memristor performance. We previously reported that the selection of TE is crucial for achieving a high memory window and stable switching performance. According to the study which compares the roles of Cu (switching stabilizer) and Ag (large switching window performer) TEs for oxide memristors, we have selected the TE materials and their alloys to engineer the SiO₂-based memristor characteristics. The Ag TE leads to a larger memory window of the SiO₂memristor, but the device shows relatively large variation and less reliability. On the other hand, the Cu TE device presents uniform gradual switching behavior which is in line with our previous report that Cu can be served as a stabilizer, but with small on/off ratio.[9] These distinct performances with Cu and Ag metallization leads us to utilize a Cu/Ag alloy as the TE. Various compositions of Cu/Ag were examined for the optimization of the memristor TEs. With a Cu/Ag alloying TE with optimized ratio, our SiO₂based memristor demonstrates uniform switching behavior and memory window for analog switching applications. Also, it shows ideal potentiation and depression synaptic behavior under the positive/negative spikes (pulse train).

   In conclusion, the SiO₂memristors with different metallization were established. To tune the property of RS layer, the sputtering conditions of RS were varied. To investigate the influence of TE selections on switching performance of memristor, we integrated Cu, Ag and Cu/Ag alloy as TEs and compared the switch characteristics. Our encouraging results clearly demonstrate that SiO₂with Cu/Ag is a promising memristor device with synaptic switching behavior in neuromorphic computing applications.

   Acknowledgement

   This work was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Award No. ECCS-1931088. S.L. and H.W.S. acknowledge the support from the Improvement of Measurement Standards and Technology for Mechanical Metrology (Grant No. 22011044) by KRISS.

   References

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   [3] Najafabadiet al.,Journal of Big Data,vol. 2, no. 1, p. 1, 2015.

   [4] Zhaoet al.,Applied Physics Reviews,vol. 7, no. 1, 2020.

   [5] Zidanet al.,Nature Electronics,vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 22-29, 2018.

   [6] Wulfet al.,SIGARCH Comput. Archit. News,vol. 23, no. 1, pp. 20–24, 1995.

   [7] Wilkes,SIGARCH Comput. Archit. News,vol. 23, no. 4, pp. 4–6, 1995.

   [8] Ielminiet al.,Nature Electronics,vol. 1, no. 6, pp. 333-343, 2018.

   [9] Changet al.,Nano Letters,vol. 10, no. 4, pp. 1297-1301, 2010.

   [10] Qinet al., Physica Status Solidi (RRL) - Rapid Research Letters, pssr.202200075R1, In press, 2022.

    

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