‘Cut and stick’ ion gels as effective dielectrics for synaptic transistors

Abstract

With the development of biomimetic engineering, artificial synaptic devices are deemed of paramount importance in the future brain-inspired neuromorphic computational devices. Meanwhile, flexible electronics have received considerable interests. Here, an artificial synapse based on the thin film transistor gated by a flexible ion gel is proposed for the synaptic emulation. Short term synaptic plasticity, long term synaptic plasticity, filtering and spike time dependent plasticity are all experimentally demonstrated in the artificial synapse. More importantly, we find out that in contrast with the conventional silicon dioxide gates, stronger synaptic behaviors can be induced by the ‘cut and stick’ ion gels at a much lower energy consumption. Our results suggest that the foldable and transferable ion gels have the potential to be incorporated into the low energy, high density and flexible neuromorphic computing devices.