High-speed Si films based threshold switching device and its artificial neuron application

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.