Research Process of Carbon Dots in Memristors

Abstract

Abstract The explosive growth of digital communication promotes advanced memory and computing devices in Big Data and artificial intelligence era. In particular, memristors hold great promise for in‐memory computing and artificial synapses, expected to break through restrictions on hardware computational power and storage capacity caused by the von Neumann bottleneck and declining Moore's Law. The memristance controllability is vital to memristors, in which functional layer materials are key. As novel functional layer materials, carbon dots (CDs) are expected to overtake silicon‐based materials due to their satisfactory modulation effects on memristance and distinguished memristive performances. The combination of CDs and matrix materials may carry out multimode sensation memristors for interactive intelligent systems. This review first gives a brief introduction to memristors and their functional layer materials, especially different CDs and their relations with memristance. Then the modulation effects of CDs on memristance are highlighted, mainly including the local electric field enhancement effect, the electron trapping and detrapping effect, and the photosensitization effect, accompanied by applications of CDs‐based memristors (CDMs). Lastly, challenges and perspectives of CDMs are pointed out. This work is rewarding to understand the role of CDs in memristors, to guide relevant research about CDMs, and to promote implementation for intelligent memory and computing.

Keywords

• artificial synapses
• carbon dots
• functional layers
• intelligent memory and computing
• memristance modulation
• memristors