In Situ Growth of Metal-Organic Framework Film for Flexible Artificial Synapse

The realization of a neuromorphic system with high power efficiency and flexibility is of great significance in constructing bionic interaction systems. Although great improvement has been achieved, the systems based on hardware level remain with great challenges in device performance and stability under deformation due to the inferior interface quality. As a result, the neuromorphic systems are incompatible and incomparable with the biological ones. Therefore, an in situ growth method to synthesize the dielectric materials on flexible substrates, which can be used for the fabrication of flexible memristor-type artificial synapses, is proposed to overcome the issues. A superiority in interface quality between the synthesized Cu₃(BTC)₂ Metal-organic framework (MOF) material and the Cu foil substrate is observed benefiting from the in situ growth method, which will contribute to the improvement in device stability under deformation. In addition, the device shows continuous conductance states due to the highly accessible sites of the MOF. As a proof of concept, an artificial neural network based on the synaptic characteristics of the artificial synapse is designed, and high recognition accuracy of >80% is achieved, even with 30% allows conductance states. These results indicate that the proposed artificial synapse has great potential in the application of neuromorphic systems.