Reliable WSe ₂ Memristors Enabled by van der Waals Electrode Integration for Advanced Reservoir Computing and Nociceptive Receptors

Memristors based on two-dimensional (2D) materials are pivotal for next-generation neuromorphic hardware, owing to their high integration density, flexibility, excellent electrical properties, and advantage in neuromorphic computing. However, practical deployment is often thwarted by substantial switching variability and limited endurance, primarily arising from uncontrollable interfacial damage and energetic metal-ion diffusion during conventional electrode deposition. Herein, high-quality monolayer WSe₂ single crystals are synthesized via bidirectional-flow physical vapor deposition (PVD). Subsequently, Ag/WSe₂/Ag memristors are constructed using a damage-free van der Waals (vdW) metal integration process to preserve the intrinsic lattice integrity. The fabricated vdW devices exhibit remarkable switching consistency with a coefficient of variation (C_v) of only 2.62%, a high memory window exceeding 10⁶, a low High Resistance State (HRS) current below 10 pA, and robust endurance exceeding 10⁵ cycles. Beyond emulating fundamental synaptic behaviors, the devices achieve high-fidelity recognition accuracies of 99.51% for the Modified National Institute of Standards and Technology (MNIST) and 95.39% for the Fashion-MNIST data sets, respectively. Furthermore, biorealistic nociceptive functionalities, such as threshold firing and sensitization, are successfully emulated. This work demonstrates that vdW electrode integration is a robust paradigm for enhancing the reliability of 2D memristors, paving the way for robust high-performance neuromorphic intelligence hardware.