High-speed Si films based threshold switching device and its artificial neuron application
Lei Yan, Yifei Pei, Jingjuan Wang, Hui He, Ying Zhao, Xiaoyu Li, Yongxin Wei, Xiaobing Yan
Abstract
Threshold switching (TS) devices are finding increasing use in the hardware implementation of neuromorphic network computing. Here, a simple structured Ag/amorphous Si/Pt TS device with a switching ratio of ∼105 is prepared, with turn-on and turn-off speeds as high as ∼20 ns and ∼16 ns, respectively. We use this TS device to construct a leaky integration-and-firing artificial neuron that emulates key biological neuron features like threshold-driven firing, all-or-nothing spiking, refractory period, intensity-modulated frequency response, and conductance-modulated frequency response. These results suggest that Si film-based TS device artificial neurons have significant potential for building high-speed artificial neural networks.