Optoelectronic Synapse Enabled by Defect Engineering of Tellurene for Neuromorphic Computing

Emerging optoelectronic synapses hold immense potential for advancing neuromorphic computing systems. However, achieving precise control over selective responses in optoelectronic memory and clarifying tunable synaptic weights has remained challenging. This study reports an optoelectronic synapse utilizing oxygen plasma-assisted defect engineering in tellurene for artificial neural networks. Through DFT calculations and experimental analyses, we demonstrate that tellurene conductance can be modulated by controlling plasma-defined defect engineering, allowing a transition from short-term to long-term synaptic plasticity, largely determined by intrinsic large-lattice-relaxation effects. Our artificial synapses exhibit high linearity, a broad dynamic range, and tunable synaptic weights. Additionally, our optoelectronic synapses display selective sensitivity to multi-spectral light and achieve a pattern recognition accuracy of up to 96.7% across five typical datasets, surpassing even the ideal synapse. These tunable spectral responses, combined with high-performance neuromorphic applications using spike coding, establish a foundation for developments in brain-inspired machine learning, robotics, and real-time data processing.