Artificial Synaptic Arrays Intercoupled by Nanogranular Proton Conductors for Building Neuromorphic Systems

TL;DR

This paper presents oxide-based artificial synaptic arrays on nanogranular proton conductors that mimic neural synaptic plasticity and natural interconnections, enabling the development of brain-like neuromorphic systems.

Contribution

It introduces a novel fabrication of interconnected artificial synapses using proton modulation without hard-wired connections, advancing neuromorphic hardware design.

Findings

Demonstrated synaptic plasticity at room temperature.

Achieved natural, distance-dependent inter-synaptic coupling.

Enabled parallel summation mimicking neural network behavior.

Abstract

The highly parallel process in the neuron networks is mediated through a mass of synaptic interconnections. Mimicking single synapse behaviors and highly paralleled neural networks has become more and more fascinating and important. Here, oxide-based artificial synaptic arrays are fabricated on P-doped nanogranular SiO2-based proton conducting films at room temperature. Synaptic plasticity is demonstrated on individual artificial synapse. Most importantly, without any intentional hard-wired connection, such synaptic arrays are intercoupled due to the electric-field induced lateral proton modulation. The natural interconnection is weakly correlative with distance, and is important for neural networks. At last, paralleled summation is also mimicked, which provides a novel approach for building future brain-like computational systems.