One-Shot Remote Integration of Macromolecular Synaptic Elements on a Chip for Ultrathin Flexible Neural Network System.

Abstract

The field of biomimetic electronics that mimic synaptic functions has expanded significantly to overcome the limitations of the von Neumann bottleneck. However, the scaling down of the technology has led to an increasingly intricate manufacturing process. To address the issue, we present a one-shot integrable electropolymerization (OSIEP) method with remote controllability for the deposition of synaptic elements on a chip by exploiting bipolar electrochemistry. Condensing synthesis, deposition, and patterning into a single fabrication step was achieved by combining alternating-current voltage superimposed on direct-current voltage-bipolar electropolymerization and a specially designed dual source/drain bipolar electrodes. As a result, uniform 6 × 5 arrays of poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT) channels were successfully fabricated on flexible ultrathin parylene substrates in one-shot process. The channels exhibited highly uniform characteristics and were directly used as electrochemical synaptic transistor with synaptic plasticity over 100 seconds. The synaptic transistors have demonstrated promising performance in an artificial neural network (NN) simulation, achieving a high recognition accuracy of 95.20%. Additionally, the array of synaptic transistor was easily reconfigured to a multi-gate synaptic circuit to implement the principles of operant conditioning. These results provide a compelling fabrication strategy for realizing cost-effective and disposable NN systems with high integration density. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.