Artificial visual systems enabled by quasi-two-dimensional electron gases in oxide superlattice nanowires

You Meng; Fangzhou Li; Changyong Lan; Xiuming Bu; Xiaolin Kang; Renjie Wei; SenPo Yip; Dapan Li; Fei Wang; Tsunaki Takahashi; Takuro Hosomi; Kazuki Nagashima; Takeshi Yanagida; Johnny C Ho

doi:10.1126/sciadv.abc6389

Artificial visual systems enabled by quasi-two-dimensional electron gases in oxide superlattice nanowires

Sci Adv. 2020 Nov 11;6(46):eabc6389. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.abc6389. Print 2020 Nov.

Authors

You Meng^{1

2

3}, Fangzhou Li¹, Changyong Lan⁴, Xiuming Bu¹, Xiaolin Kang^{1

2

3}, Renjie Wei^{1

2

3

5}, SenPo Yip^{1

2

3

5}, Dapan Li^{1

3}, Fei Wang^{1

2}, Tsunaki Takahashi⁶, Takuro Hosomi⁶, Kazuki Nagashima⁶, Takeshi Yanagida^{6

7}, Johnny C Ho^{8

2

3

5

7}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon 999077, Hong Kong SAR.
² State Key Laboratory of Terahertz and Millimeter Waves, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon 999077, Hong Kong SAR.
³ Centre for Functional Photonics, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon 999077, Hong Kong SAR.
⁴ School of Optoelectronic Science and Engineering, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 610054, P. R. China.
⁵ Shenzhen Research Institute, City University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen 518057, P. R. China.
⁶ Department of Applied Chemistry, School of Engineering, University of Tokyo, Tokyo 113-8654, Japan.
⁷ Institute for Materials Chemistry and Engineering, Kyushu University, Fukuoka 816-8580, Japan.
⁸ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon 999077, Hong Kong SAR. johnnyho@cityu.edu.hk.

Abstract

Rapid development of artificial intelligence techniques ignites the emerging demand on accurate perception and understanding of optical signals from external environments via brain-like visual systems. Here, enabled by quasi-two-dimensional electron gases (quasi-2DEGs) in InGaO₃(ZnO)₃ superlattice nanowires (NWs), an artificial visual system was built to mimic the human ones. This system is based on an unreported device concept combining coexistence of oxygen adsorption-desorption kinetics on NW surface and strong carrier quantum-confinement effects in superlattice core, to resemble the biological Ca²⁺ ion flux and neurotransmitter release dynamics. Given outstanding mobility and sensitivity of superlattice NWs, an ultralow energy consumption down to subfemtojoule per synaptic event is realized in quasi-2DEG synapses, which rivals that of biological synapses and now available synapse-inspired electronics. A flexible quasi-2DEG artificial visual system is demonstrated to simultaneously perform high-performance light detection, brain-like information processing, nonvolatile charge retention, in situ multibit-level memory, orientation selectivity, and image memorizing.

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