Artificial Synaptic Emulators Based on MoS2 Flash Memory Devices with Double Floating Gates

Abstract

We fabricated MoS2-based flash memory devices by stacking MoS2 and hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) layers on an hBN/Au substrate and demonstrated that these devices can emulate various biological synaptic functions, including potentiation and depression processes, spike-rate-dependent plasticity, and spike-timing dependent plasticity. In particular, compared to a flash memory device prepared on an hBN substrate, the device fabricated on the hBN/Au exhibited considerably more symmetric and linear bidirectional gradual conductance change curves, which may be attributed to the device structure incorporating double floating gate. For the device on the hBN/Au, electron transfers may occur between the floating gate MoS2 and Au, as well as between the floating gate MoS2 and the channel MoS2, allowing for more control over electron tunneling and injection. To test our hypothesis, we also fabricated a MoS2-based flash memory device on an hBN/Pd substrate and found behavior similar to the device fabricated on hBN/Au. Our results demonstrate that flexible synaptic electronics may be implemented using MoS2-based flash memory devices with double floating gates.