Mimicking Pain Conditioning Using an Electrolyte‐Gated Organic Synaptic Transistor

Abstract

Pain‐perceptual Nociceptors (PPNs) in the biological sensory system are critical for the human body to perceive noxious stimuli from the outside world and start appropriate motor responses to minimize potential physical damage. Realization artificial nociceptors with unique synaptic and pain‐perceptual functions of the human nervous system is a key step to develop the next‐generation artificial intelligence systems. Here, an artificial pain‐perceptual device based on an ionic liquid‐polymer solid‐state electrolyte‐gated poly(3‐hexylthiophene) (P3HT) transistor is reported. With the drift motion of mobile ions in the electrolyte layer and the formation of an electric double layer (EDL) at electrolyte/semiconductor interface under an applied electric field, the channel conductance can be tuned progressively to exhibit synaptic weight modulation function. On top of the artificial synaptic functions, the P3HT/electrolyte‐based transistor successfully emulates the pain‐perception process in a biological nociceptor, with all unique features of threshold, no adaptation, sensitization/desensitization, and relaxation. Moreover, the pain conditioning process (i.e., hyperalgesic response, and pain extinction effect) through associative learning is demonstrated using the artificial synaptic transistor, indicating its potential application in bio‐inspired neural systems.