Self-powered artificial synapses actuated by triboelectric nanogenerator

Abstract Biological synapses were the basic structure for information transmit, which also perform key computation functions in neural circuits. Such functionality inspires artificial intelligence to mimic human brain, which has 1015 synapses and consumed only ∼1–100 fJ per synaptic event during massively parallel information processing. It thus indicates that artificial synapse devices with low power consumption are highly desired to mimic human brain. In this work, we developed a distinctive structure of self-powered synapse transistor to emulate synapse functions, and the voltage was provided by a triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) without using additional voltage to generate pre-synapse spike. Moreover, TENG could simultaneously function as tactile sensor to realize self-powered tactile synapse with simple device structure. The essential synaptic functions such as excitatory postsynaptic current (EPSC), paired-pulse facilitation (PPF), dynamic filtering, and short-term plasticity (STP) to long-term plasticity (LTP) were demonstrated in the self-powered synapse transistor devices by touching the TENG. Moreover, the logic gate “AND”, and “OR” were achieved using TENGs as multiple pre-synaptic, and tactile study was also mimicked. The integration of TENG and synapse transistor device has great potentials in the applications of novel e-skin devices for artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction.