Nitrogen-doped carbon quantum dot-decorated In2O3 synaptic transistors for neuromorphic computing
Muhammad Zahid, Muhammad Irfan Sadiq, Chenxing Jin, Jingwen Wang, Xiaofang Shi, Wanrong Liu, Fawad Aslam, Yunchao Xu, Muhammad Tahir, Junliang Yang, Jia Sun
Abstract
Nitrogen-doped carbon quantum dots (N-CQDs) are promising materials for electronic devices due to their variable bandgap and structural stability. Here, we integrate N-CQDs into In2O3 synaptic transistors with electrolyte gating, resulting in a hybrid structure. The surface functional groups and defects of N-CQDs empower the charge trapping mechanism, permitting controlled conduction and charge regulation, which are crucial for emulating linear and symmetric artificial synaptic devices. Devices incorporating N-CQDs demonstrate enhanced stability and memory characteristics, low energy consumption, consistent retention, and a significant hysteresis window across multiple voltage cycles. Finally, the study emulates biological synapses and cognitive functions, achieving an energy consumption of 10 fJ per synaptic event and a pattern recognition accuracy of 91.2% on the MNIST dataset in hardware neural networks. This work demonstrates the potential of well-manipulating charge trapping in N-CQDs to develop high-performance, nonvolatile synaptic devices.