As a key building block of biological cortex, neurons are powerful information processing units and can achieve highly complex nonlinear computations even in individual cells. Hardware implementation of artificial neurons with similar capability is of great significance for the construction of intelligent, neuromorphic systems. Here, we demonstrate an artificial neuron based on NbO x volatile memristor that not only realizes traditional all-or-nothing, threshold-driven spiking and spatiotemporal integration, but also enables dynamic logic including XOR function that is not linearly separable and multiplicative gain modulation among different dendritic inputs, therefore surpassing neuronal functions described by a simple point neuron model. A monolithically integrated 4 × 4 fully memristive neural network consisting of volatile NbO x memristor based neurons and nonvolatile TaO x memristor based synapses in a single crossbar array is experimentally demonstrated, showing capability in pattern recognition through online learning using a simplified δ-rule and coincidence detection, which paves the way for bio-inspired intelligent systems.

Neuromorphic perception systems inspired by biology have tremendous potential in efficiently processing multi-sensory signals from the physical world, but a highly efficient hardware element capable of sensing and encoding multiple physical signals is still lacking. Here, we report a spike-based neuromorphic perception system consisting of calibratable artificial sensory neurons based on epitaxial VO2, where the high crystalline quality of VO2 leads to significantly improved cycle-to-cycle uniformity. A calibration resistor is introduced to optimize device-to-device consistency, and to adapt the VO2 neuron to different sensors with varied resistance level, a scaling resistor is further incorporated, demonstrating cross-sensory neuromorphic perception component that can encode illuminance, temperature, pressure and curvature signals into spikes. These components are utilized to monitor the curvatures of fingers, thereby achieving hand gesture classification. This study addresses the fundamental cycle-to-cycle and device-to-device variation issues of sensory neurons, therefore promoting the construction of neuromorphic perception systems for e-skin and neurorobotics.

Memristors proposed by Leon Chua provide a new type of memory device for novel neuromorphic computing applications. However, the approaching of distinct multi‐intermediate states for tunable switching dynamics, the controlling of conducting filaments (CFs) toward high device repeatability and reproducibility, and the ability for large‐scale preparation devices, remain full of challenges. Here, we show that vertical‐organic‐nanocrystal‐arrays (VONAs) could make a way toward the challenges. The perfect one‐dimensional structure of the VONAs could confine the CFs accurately with fine‐tune resistance states in a broad range of 103 ratios. The availability of large‐area VONAs makes the fabrication of large‐area crossbar memristor arrays facilely, and the analog switching characteristic of the memristors is to effectively imitate different kinds of synaptic plasticity, indicating their great potential in future applications.

Optimization problems are ubiquitous in scientific research, engineering, and daily lives. However, solving a complex optimization problem often requires excessive computing resource and time and faces challenges in easily getting trapped into local optima. Here, we propose a memristive optimizer hardware based on a Hopfield network, which introduces transient chaos to simulated annealing in aid of jumping out of the local optima while ensuring convergence. A single memristor crossbar is used to store the weight parameters of a fully connected Hopfield network and adjust the network dynamics in situ. Furthermore, we harness the intrinsic nonlinearity of memristors within the crossbar to implement an efficient and simplified annealing process for the optimization. Solutions of continuous function optimizations on sphere function and Matyas function as well as combinatorial optimization on Max-cut problem are experimentally demonstrated, indicating great potential of the transiently chaotic memristive network in solving optimization problems in general.