Dendritic organic electrochemical transistors grown by electropolymerization for 3D neuromorphic engineering

TL;DR

This paper introduces a method to grow 3D dendritic PEDOT:PSS networks via bipolar electropolymerization, enabling neuromorphic devices with controllable plasticity and morphology for advanced brain-inspired hardware.

Contribution

It presents a novel electropolymerization technique to create 3D dendritic structures for organic transistors, mimicking neural plasticity in neuromorphic engineering.

Findings

Dendritic fibers can be grown with controllable shapes.

Electrical properties of OECTs depend on dendrite morphology.

Demonstrated plasticity features in organic transistors.

Abstract

One of the major limitation of standard top-down technologies used in today's neuromorphic engineering is their inability to map the 3D nature of biological brains. Here, we show how bipolar electropolymerization can be used to engineer 3D networks of PEDOT:PSS dendritic fibers. By controlling the growth conditions of the electropolymerized material, we investigate how dendritic fibers can reproduce structural plasticity by creating structures of controllable shape. We demonstrate gradual topologies evolution in a multi-electrode configuration. We conduct a detail electrical characterization of the PEDOT:PSS dendrites through DC and impedance spectroscopy measurements and we show how organic electrochemical transistors (OECT) can be realized with these structures. These measurements reveal that quasi-static and transient response of OECTs can be adjust by controlling dendrites' morphologies. The unique properties of organic dendrites are used to demonstrate short-term, long-term and structural plasticity, which are essential features required for future neuromorphic hardware development.