Dielectric-Engineered High-Speed, Low-Power, Highly Reliable Charge Trap Flash-Based Synaptic Device for Neuromorphic Computing beyond Inference.

The coming of the big-data era brought a need for power-efficient computing that cannot be realized in the Von Neumann architecture. Neuromorphic computing which is motivated by the human brain can greatly reduce power consumption through matrix multiplication, and a device that mimics a human synapse plays an important role. However, many synaptic devices suffer from limited linearity and symmetry without using incremental step pulse programming (ISPP). In this work, we demonstrated a charge-trap flash (CTF)-based synaptic transistor using trap-level engineered Al2O3/Ta2O5/Al2O3 gate stack for successful neuromorphic computing. This novel gate stack provided precise control of the conductance with more than 6 bits. We chose the appropriate bias for highly linear and symmetric modulation of conductance and realized it with very short (25 ns) identical pulses at low voltage, resulting in low power consumption and high reliability. Finally, we achieved high learning accuracy in the training of 60000 MNIST images.

High-sensitivity waveguide-integrated bolometer based on free-carrier absorption for Si photonic sensors.

Conventional photon detectors necessarily face critical challenges regarding strong wavelength-selective response and narrow spectral bandwidth, which are undesirable for spectroscopic applications requiring a wide spectral range. With this perspective, herein, we overcome these challenges through a free-carrier absorption-based waveguide-integrated bolometer for infrared spectroscopic sensors on a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) platform featuring a spectrally flat response at near-infrared (NIR) range (1520-1620 nm). An in-depth thermal analysis was conducted with a systematic investigation of geometry dependence on the detectors. We achieved great performances: temperature coefficient of resistance (TCR) of -3.786%/K and sensitivity of -26.75%/mW with a low wavelength dependency, which are record-high values among reported waveguide bolometers so far, to our knowledge. In addition, a clear on-off response with the rise/fall time of 24.2/29.2 µs and a 3-dB roll-off frequency of ∼22 kHz were obtained, sufficient for a wide range of sensing applications. Together with the possibility of expanding an operation range to the mid-infrared (MIR) band, as well as simplicity in the detector architecture, our work here presents a novel strategy for integrated photodetectors covering NIR to MIR at room temperature for the development of the future silicon photonic sensors with ultrawide spectral bandwidth.

Oxygen scavenging of HfZrO2-based capacitors for improving ferroelectric properties.

HfO2-based ferroelectric (FE) materials have emerged as a promising material for non-volatile memory applications because of remanent polarization, scalability of thickness below 10 nm, and compatibility with complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor technology. However, in the metal/FE/insulator/semiconductor, it is difficult to improve switching voltage (V sw), endurance, and retention properties due to the interfacial layer (IL), which inevitably grows during the fabrication. Here, we proposed and demonstrated oxygen scavenging to reduce the IL thickness in an HfZrO x -based capacitor and the thinner IL was confirmed by cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy. V sw of a capacitor with scavenging decreased by 18% and the same P r could be obtained at a lower voltage than a capacitor without scavenging. In addition, excellent endurance properties up to 106 cycles were achieved. We believe oxygen scavenging has great potential for future HfZrO x -based memory device applications.