Printing polyaniline based organic memristive devices for neuromorphic computing applications

Organic electronics is recognized as a valid candidate for the emulation of brain-like functionalities, especially when the application demands to limit the power consumption. Among other technologies, memristors gained an increasing attention due to their non-volatile properties and their use as synaptic elements in artificial neural networks. Several memristive devices have been proposed, exploring different materials, working principles and deposition methods. Very recently printing memristors have been proposed for limiting the material waste, the production cost and the need of masking samples during the fabrication. Herein, a low-energy inkjet-printed organic based memristive device realized with a pure polyaniline channel is demonstrated. This type of device perfectly emulates synaptic and neuronal functions and works in low-voltage electroforming-free operational regime (<1 V). These abilities arise from the possibility of fine-tuning the reaction rate of the polyaniline layers by acting on the internal voltage distribution of the system. These electronic elements can efficiently serve as synaptic elements in 784x512x10 network simulation, enabling classifying handwritten digits with the accuracy of more than 95% (in presence of cycle-to-cycle and device-to-device variation). This suggests that these devices are excellent candidates for the implementation of neuromorphic systems, paving the way for the realization of printed neuromorphic electronics.