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CogniGron Seminar: Manuel Bibes (CNRS/Thales) - Learning through ferroelectric domain dynamics in solid state synapses

When:Tu 12-09-2017 13:30 - 14:30
Where:5173.0151 (Linnaeusborg)

In the brain, learning is achieved through the ability of synapses to reconfigure the strength by which they connect two neurons. Artificial hardware with performances emulating those of biological systems require electronic nanosynapses endowed with such plasticity. Promising solid-state synapses are memristors, simple two-terminal nanodevices that can be finely tuned by voltage pulses. Their conductance evolves according to a learning rule called spike-timing-dependent plasticity, conjectured to underlie unsupervised learning in our brains. In this talk I will report on purely electronic ferroelectric synapses1,2 and show that spike timing-dependent plasticity can be harnessed and tuned from intrinsically inhomogeneous ferroelectric polarisation switching3 . Through combined scanning probe imaging and electrical transport experiments, we demonstrate that conductance variations in such BiFeO3-based ferroelectric memristors can be accurately controlled and modelled by the nucleation-dominated electric-field switching of domains with different polarisations. Our results show that ferroelectric nanosynapses are able to learn in a reliable and predictable way, opening the way towards unsupervised learning in spiking neural networks.

1.           Garcia, V. et al. Giant tunnel electroresistance for non-destructive readout of ferroelectric states. Nature 460, 81–4 (2009).

2.           Chanthbouala, A. et al. A ferroelectric memristor. Nature Mater. 11, 860–4 (2012).

3.           Boyn, S. et al. Learning through ferroelectric domain dynamics in solid-state synapses. Nature Commun. 8, 14736 (2017).

Contact & more about Manuel:

Manuel Bibes - Unité Mixte de Physique CNRS/Thales, Palaiseau (France)

manuel.bibes cnrs-thales.fr

https://oxitronics.wordpress.com/