Flexible and Stretchable Memristive Arrays for in-Memory Computing

Xusheng Liu,Jie Qiu,Ming Wang,Qi Liu,Jie Cao,Xumeng Zhang

doi:10.3389/fnano.2021.821687

Abstract

With the tremendous progress of Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, the demand for flexible and stretchable electronic systems is rapidly increasing. As the vital component of a system, existing computing units are usually rigid and brittle, which are incompatible with flexible and stretchable electronics. Emerging memristive devices with flexibility and stretchability as well as direct processing-in-memory ability are promising candidates to perform data computing in flexible and stretchable electronics. To execute the in-memory computing paradigm including digital and analogue computing, the array configuration of memristive devices is usually required. Herein, the recent progress on flexible and stretchable memristive arrays for in-memory computing is reviewed. The common materials used for flexible memristive arrays, including inorganic, organic and two-dimensional (2D) materials, will be highlighted, and effective strategies used for stretchable memristive arrays, including material innovation and structural design, will be discussed in detail. The current challenges and future perspectives of the in-memory computing utilizing flexible and stretchable memristive arrays are presented. These efforts aim to accelerate the development of flexible and stretchable memristive arrays for data computing in advanced intelligent systems, such as electronic skin, soft robotics, and wearable devices.

Highlights

The emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) technology has promoted the rapid development of flexible and stretchable intelligent systems, such as electronic skin (e-skin) (Yang et al, 2019; Wang et al, 2020b), soft robotics (Wang et al, 2018b; Park et al, 2020b), and wearable devices (Liu et al, 2020)
As a basic component of the intelligent system, existing computing units based on complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology are usually rigid and brittle, which are difficult to be integrated into flexible and stretchable systems (Gao et al, 2019)
Sun et al developed a flexible self-selective memristive device based on a van der Waals heterostructure with the hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN)/graphene/h-BN structure (Figure 3E) (Sun et al, 2019)

Summary

INTRODUCTION

The emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) technology has promoted the rapid development of flexible and stretchable intelligent systems, such as electronic skin (e-skin) (Yang et al, 2019; Wang et al, 2020b), soft robotics (Wang et al, 2018b; Park et al, 2020b), and wearable devices (Liu et al, 2020). A wide variety of semiconductor and dielectric materials such as inorganic (Yoon et al, 2018; Jo et al, 2021; Wang et al, 2021d), organic (van de Burgt et al, 2018; Park et al, 2020a), two-dimensional materials (Zhang et al, 2019a; Meng et al, 2021) and their derivatives (Gu and Lee, 2016) have been developed to obtain flexible and stretchable memristive devices and arrays. The following section will discuss the recent progress of flexible memristive arrays and identify the critical challenges in the actualization of data computing

Flexible Inorganic Memristive Arrays

Flexible Organic Memristive Arrays

Materials Innovation for Stretchable Memristive Arrays

Structural Design for Stretchable Memristive Arrays

Findings

SUMMARY