Bursting and excitability in neuromorphic resonant tunneling diodes

Abstract

We study in this paper the dynamics of quantum nanoelectronic resonant tunneling diodes (RTDs) as excitable neuromorphic spike generators. We disclose the mechanisms by which the RTD creates excitable all-or-nothing spikes and we identify a regime of bursting in which the RTD emits a random number of closely packed spikes. The control of the latter is paramount for applications in event-activated neuromorphic sensing and computing. Finally, we discuss a regime of multistability in which the RTD behaves as a memory. Our results can be extended to other devices exhibiting negative differential conductance.