Abstract:
An artificial synapse (synapse-resistor) for neuromorphic circuits has been developed and investigated; its operating principle is based on the use of semiconductor-metal phase transition in vanadium dioxide. Vanadium dioxide polycrystalline thin films were synthesized by ion-beam sputtering-deposition method. The synapse resistor was formed by photolithography on SiO$_2$ membrane. The linear dimensions of the synapse resistor are $\approx$ 100 m. The electrical characteristics were investigated and the possibility of controlling the resistance of the synapse resistor by electrical pulses was demonstrated. The performance of the synapse resistor at the specified dimensions was about 20 s. An electrical scheme of McCulloch–Pitts artificial neuron realization based on synapse-resistors was proposed. The synapse-resistor design allows scaling up to the size of a few microns, which will reduce power consumption and increase performance by more than 100 times.
Keywords:vanadium dioxide, semiconductor-metal phase transition, artificial synapse, analog neural networks.
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