A synaptic memristor based on two-dimensional layered WSe 2 nanosheets with short- and long-term plasticity

• Published in: Nanoscale Vol. 13; no. 13; pp. 6654 - 6660
• Main Authors: Luo, Songwen, Liao, Kanghong, Lei, Peixian, Jiang, Ting, Chen, Siyi, Xie, Qin, Luo, Wenbo, Huang, Wen, Yuan, Shuoguo, Jie, Wenjing, Hao, Jianhua
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England 09.04.2021
• Subjects: Long-Term Potentiation; Neuronal Plasticity; Neurons; Reproducibility of Results; Synapses
• ISSN: 2040-3364; 2040-3372
• DOI: 10.1039/D0NR08725D

Neural synapses with diverse synaptic functions of short- and long-term plasticity are highly desired for developing complex neuromorphic systems. A memristor with its two terminals serving as pre- and post-neurons, respectively, can emulate two neuronal-based synaptic functions. In this work, multilayer two-dimensional (2D) layered WSe nanosheets are synthesized by a salt-assisted chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method. Two-terminal memristors with a planar structure are fabricated based on the CVD-grown triangular WSe nanosheets. The fabricated devices exhibit typical bipolar nonvolatile resistive switching behaviors with a high current ON/OFF ratio of up to 6 × 10 and good retention and endurance properties, suggesting good stability and reliability of the WSe -based memristors. Furthermore, the developed memristors demonstrate synaptic functions of short- and long-term plasticity (STP and LTP), as well as a transition from STP to LTP by applying consecutive pulse voltages. Moreover, the WSe -based memristors exhibits biological synaptic functions of long-term potentiation and depression, and paired-pulse facilitation. Thus, our 2D WSe nanosheet based memristors not only exhibit stable and reliable nonvolatile resistive switching behaviors, but also show potential applications in mimicking biological synapses.