Room-temperature valley transistors for low-power neuromorphic computing

Abstract

Valley pseudospin is an electronic degree of freedom that promises highly efficient information processing applications. However, valley-polarized excitons usually have short pico-second lifetimes, which limits the room-temperature applicability of valleytronic devices. Here, we demonstrate room-temperature valley transistors that operate by generating free carrier valley polarization with a long lifetime. This is achieved by electrostatic manipulation of the non-trivial band topology of the Weyl semiconductor tellurium (Te). We observe valley-polarized diffusion lengths of more than 7 μm and fabricate valley transistors with an ON/OFF ratio of 10⁵ at room temperature. Moreover, we demonstrate an ion insertion/extraction device structure that enables 32 non-volatile memory states with high linearity and symmetry in the Te valley transistor. With ultralow power consumption (~fW valley contribution), we enable the inferring process of artificial neural networks, exhibiting potential for applications in low-power neuromorphic computing.