The Polymer Society of Korea

Abstract

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are promising candidates for next-generation electronic materials due to their high charge mobility, chemical and thermal stability and mechanical flexibility. However, their metallic and semiconducting CNT mixture requires time and cost consuming sorting processes before device fabrication. In this study, we demonstrate a sorting-free CNT channel synaptic transistor using electrolyte-gated doping. An electrolyte composed of a ferroelectric polymer and ionic liquid induces p-type doping in the CNTs. We investigated the switching behavior of the CNT devices as a function of ionic concentration and doping state under applied bias. The devices exhibit stable conductance modulation, long-term potentiation/depression and short-term plasticity. Furthermore, we evaluated synaptic performance through pattern recognition simulations. These results suggest that our simple synaptic device fabrication process is a promising approach for neuromorphic computing applications.