Artifical synapses for neuromorphic computing

Neuromorphic engineering is already revolutionising computing by developing electronic devices that emulate neuro-biological architectures at the hardware level. Such devices promise to decrease substantially the energy consumption of computing and extend its functionalities, allowing artificial intelligence (AI) to be embedded everywhere and benefit modern societies through brain-like capabilities.

We develop novel materials and device architectures, such as vertical and coplanar memristors, to achieve a significant breakthrough in neuromorphic hardware. More specifically, we use:

  • redox-active molecules, like polyoxometalates and metal oxides

  • materials with tunable optoelectronic properties, like organic semiconductors

  • mixed ionic-electronic semiconducting materials, like perovskites

  • nanomaterials, like 2D transition metal dichalcogenides and 0D quantum dots

We explore neuromorphic computing with light as we believe it can overcome the fundamental scaling limitation, as it operates faster and bears the potential for orders of magnitude lower power dissipation than electronics. Emerging applications can already be found in smart imaging, where light sensors are designed to mimic the spatio-temporal nature of human vision, not only by turning light into electrical signals but also by capturing and sending the useful-only (non-redundant) information to the processing unit in an extremely efficient manner. The so-called computer vision is particularly relevant to autonomous (self-driving) vehicles and AR/VR, since this type of light sensor offers increased speed, greater dynamic range, and decreased computational cost.

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