Tuneable Ionic Memristor Based on Bipolar Electrochemistry

Abstract

The advance of neuromorphic computing is driven by the development of computing hardware and architecture. For further improving the energy efficiency of the computing, nanofluidic ionic memristors have been rapidly developed for mimicking the ionic mechanisms of biological neurons and synapses. In these systems, designs and syntheses of nanosized pores, channels and 2D-slits are required to accomplish the memristive mechanisms. This study proposes another mechanism to achieve an ionic memristor, which is based on a closed electrochemical bipolar cell with a designed bipolar electrode (BPE). Under an applied potential, the different electrochemical reactions on both sides of the BPE would lead to a memristive response with diode-like rectification. More importantly, the bipolar electrochemical memristor allows easy tuning of the response by simply varying the range of the applied electric potential. With the simple and scalable fabrication based on electrodeposition, the present system has great potential uses in neuromorphic architectures.