Scalable Microscale Artificial Synapses of Lead Halide Perovskite with Femtojoule Energy Consumption

The efficient conduction of mobile ions in halide perovskites is highly promising for artificial synapses (or memristive devices), devices with a conductivity that can be varied by applying a bias voltage. Here we address the challenge of downscaling halide perovskite-based artificial synapses to achieve low energy consumption and allow high-density integration. We fabricate halide perovskite artificial synapses in a back-contacted architecture to achieve microscale devices despite the high solubility of halide perovskites in polar solvents that are commonly used in lithography. The energy consumption of a conductance change of the device is as low as 640 fJ, among the lowest reported for two-terminal halide perovskite artificial synapses so far. Moreover, the high resistance of the device up to hundreds of megaohms, low operating voltage of 100 mV and simple two-terminal architecture enable implementation in highly dense crossbar arrays. These arrays could potentially show orders of magnitude lower energy consumption for computation compared to conventional digital computers.