Memristors have promising prospects to develop neuromorphic chips that parallel the brain-level power efficiency and brain-like computational functions. However, the limited available ON/OFF states and high switching voltage in a...

In this work, we report a high-performance photodetector based on perovskite CH3NH3PbBr3 quantum dots (QDs) films with a configuration of Au/CH3NH3PbBr3 QDs-Al2O3-indium tin oxide/Au as a bioinspired photoelectric synapse. The uniform CH3NH3PbBr3 QDs thin film is fabricated by a electrodepositing QDs solution and exhibits favorable long-term stability at ambient. By inserting an Al2O3 film, the dark current of the QDs film photodetectors is significantly suppressed as a result of the blocking effect, accompanied by the enhanced ON/OFF ratio. Furthermore, the optimal photodetector is utilized as a photoelectric synapse. Through modulating the light pulse stimuli, some underlying synaptic functions, including paired-pulse facilitation, axon-multi-synapses network function, and the transformation from short-term plasticity to long-term plasticity, are flexibly emulated on a single photoelectric synapse. These remarkable results are promising for building hardware units with neuromorphic architecture to mimic the human brain functionalities.

High-speed optical communication systems are built for real-time, massive, and remote information exchange; however, it is strongly reliant on the applied power. Herein, we developed a self-driven optical communication system based on a high-performance graphene/n-Si (Gr/n-Si) hybrid photodetector. Under zero bias, the Gr/n-Si device presents good performance at a wavelength of 520 nm, including the photoresponsivity of 0.27 A W−1, specific detectivity of 9.39 × 1011 Jones, and on/off ratio of 104 with a rise and fall time of 128 and 131 ns, respectively. This hybrid device also exhibits 3 dB bandwidth of 2.18 MHz as well as a small noise equivalent power of 1.68 × 10−17 W Hz−1/2. Furthermore, an optical communication system was constructed based on this hybrid photodetector, through which the audio and text signals were steadily and accurately transmitted under zero bias. Our work lays a solid foundation to demonstrate a promising application of Gr/n-Si hybrid devices toward self-driven optical communications.