Amorphous gallium oxide homojunction-based optoelectronic synapse for multi-functional signal processing

Abstract In the era of accelerated development in artificial intelligence as well as explosive growth of information and data throughput, underlying hardware devices that can integrate perception and memory while simultaneously offering the benefits of low power consumption and high transmission rates are particularly valuable. Neuromorphic devices inspired by the human brain are considered to be one of the most promising successors to the efficient in-sensory process. In this paper, a homojunction-based multi-functional optoelectronic synapse (MFOS) is proposed and testified. It enables a series of basic electrical synaptic plasticity, including paired-pulse facilitation/depression (PPF/PPD) and long-term promotion/depression (LTP/LTD). In addition, the synaptic behaviors induced by electrical signals could be instead achieved through optical signals, where its sensitivity to optical frequency allows the MFOS to simulate high-pass filtering applications in situ and the perception capability integrated into memory endows it with the information acquisition and processing functions as a visual system. Meanwhile, the MFOS exhibits its performances of associative learning and logic gates following the illumination with two different wavelengths. As a result, the proposed MFOS offers a solution for the realization of intelligent visual system and bionic electronic eye, and will provide more diverse application scenarios for future neuromorphic computing.