4-Terminal Ferroelectric Schottky Barrier Field Effect Transistors as Artificial Synapses

Abstract

In this paper, artificial synapses based on 4-terminal ferroelectric Schottky barrier field effect transistors (FE-SBFETs) are experimentally demonstrated. The ferroelectric polarization switching dynamics gradually modulate the Schottky barriers, thus programming the device conductance by applying positive and negative pulses to imitate the excitation and inhibition behaviors of biological synapse, respectively. The excitatory post-synaptic current can be tuned by the back-gate bias, enabling the reconfiguration of the weight profile with high speed (20 ns) and low energy (< 1 fJ) consumption. Besides, tunable long term potentiation and depression with high endurance and low cycle-to-cycle variations are achieved. These findings demonstrate FE-SBFET has high potential as an ideal synaptic component for the future intelligent neuromorphic network.