Self-Powered Photonic Synapses with Rapid Optical Erasing Ability for Neuromorphic Visual Perception

/solvent/carbon nitride multilayer architecture to emulate synaptic behaviors, such as excitatory postsynaptic currents, paired-pulse facilitation, and long/short-term memory. Intriguingly, the unique radiation direction-dependent photocurrent endows the photonic synapses with the capability of optical writing and rapid optical erasing. Moreover, the photonic synapses exhibit exceptional performance in contrast enhancement and noise reduction owing to the notable synaptic plasticity. In simulations based on artificial neural network (ANN) algorithms, the pre-processing by our photonic synapses improves the recognition rate of handwritten digit from 11.4% (200 training epochs) to 85% (~60 training epochs). Furthermore, due to the excellent feature extraction and memory capability, an array based on the photonic synapses can imitate facial recognition of human retina without the assistance of ANN.