by In recent years, the development of smaller and more versatile field effect transistors (FETs) has been a major focus for electronics engineers. FETs are crucial components in electronic devices as they control the flow of electrical current. However, miniaturizing FETs to sizes below 10nm has proven to be a significant challenge. To address this issue, researchers have been exploring the potential of reconfigurable devices as alternatives to conventional FETs.
One of the main limitations of reconfigurable devices developed in the past is that they are typically based on silicon FETs. While some of these devices have shown promising results, they often require complex electronic circuitry and additional memory units, which makes large-scale production and integration with other electronic components difficult.
To overcome these limitations, a team of researchers at Tsinghua University recently developed new non-volatile reconfigurable devices based on the semiconductor molybdenum ditelluride. These devices can switch between multiple functions, serving as diodes, memories, logic gates, and even artificial synapses in neuromorphic computing hardware. The researchers introduced these reconfigurable devices in a paper published in Nature Electronics.
The use of two-dimensional semiconductors, like molybdenum ditelluride, offers promising possibilities for creating non-volatile reconfigurable devices due to their atomic thinness and strong gate control. However, it has been challenging to achieve diverse reconfigurable functions with a simple device configuration. To address this challenge, the researchers employed an effective-gate-voltage-programmed graded-doping strategy, which allowed them to create a single-gate two-dimensional molybdenum ditelluride device with multiple reconfigurable functions.
The team conducted a series of tests to evaluate the performance and capabilities of their reconfigurable devices. They also compared their devices with previously developed reconfigurable devices based on 2D materials. The results were highly promising, demonstrating that the device’s reconfigurability is comparable, if not greater, than that of other designs introduced in previous literature. Additionally, the molybdenum ditelluride-based device showed remarkable performance in all of its different functions and had potential for easier scalability compared to silicon-based alternatives.
According to the researchers, the device can be programmed to function as a polarity-switchable diode, memory, in-memory Boolean logic gates, and artificial synapses with homosynaptic plasticity and heterosynaptic plasticity. As a diode, the device exhibits a rectification ratio of up to 104, and as an artificial heterosynapse, it demonstrates heterosynaptic metaplasticity with a modulatory power consumption that can be reduced to 7.3 fW.
Looking ahead, the molybdenum ditelluride-based device developed by the researchers could be further improved, integrated with other electronics, and subjected to additional experiments. Moreover, its design could serve as an inspiration for the development of other reconfigurable and multi-functional devices, opening up promising research avenues to enhance electronics.
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- Source: Coherent Market Insights, Public sources, Desk research
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