IGZO/CsPbBr₃-Nanoparticles/IGZO Neuromorphic Phototransistors and Their Optoelectronic Coupling Applications

Optoelectronic synaptic devices are of great scientific and practical importance because of various potential applications such as ocular simulating and optical–electrical managers based on a new optoelectronic coupling mechanism. In this work, we design a novel channel layer with p-type CsPbBr3 nanoparticles (NPs) buried in an InGaZnO (IGZO) film to construct the corresponding thin-film transistors (TFTs), which exhibits intense improvement in visible-light photosensitivity and synaptic plasticity as compared to the pure IGZO counterpart. Specifically, the composite device is able to exhibit versatile synaptic behavior under light stimuli with density as low as 0.12 μW/cm2 and with the gain 5–20 times higher than that of the IGZO TFT in the visible-light region. Based on the band alignment between the IGZO and NPs, the excitation and decay processes of intrinsic and photoinduced carriers are discussed. Moreover, owing to the gate bias control in a three-terminal configuration, our TFT synapses can imitate complex biological behaviors including the famous “Pavlov’s dog” experiment and the “reward and punishment mechanism” of the brain via editing the gate voltage/light pulse stimuli.