Electro-Thermal Characterization of Dynamical VO Memristors via Local Activity Modeling.

Translating the surging interest in neuromorphic electronic components, such as those based on nonlinearities near Mott transitions, into large-scale commercial deployment faces steep challenges in the current lack of means to identify and design key material parameters. These issues are exemplified by the difficulties in connecting measurable material properties to device behavior via circuit element models. Here, the principle of local activity is used to build a model of VO /SiN Mott threshold switches by sequentially accounting for constraints from a minimal set of quasistatic and dynamic electrical and high-spatial-resolution thermal data obtained via in situ thermoreflectance mapping.

Fast Spiking of a Mott VO-Carbon Nanotube Composite Device.

The recent surge of interest in brain-inspired computing and power-efficient electronics has dramatically bolstered development of computation and communication using neuron-like spiking signals. Devices that can produce rapid and energy-efficient spiking could significantly advance these applications. Here we demonstrate direct current or voltage-driven periodic spiking with sub-20 ns pulse widths from a single device composed of a thin VO film with a metallic carbon nanotube as a nanoscale heater, without using an external capacitor.

Localized Triggering of the Insulator-Metal Transition in VO Using a Single Carbon Nanotube.

Vanadium dioxide (VO) has been widely studied for its rich physics and potential applications, undergoing a prominent insulator-metal transition (IMT) near room temperature. The transition mechanism remains highly debated, and little is known about the IMT at nanoscale dimensions. To shed light on this problem, here we use ∼1 nm-wide carbon nanotube (CNT) heaters to trigger the IMT in VO.