There is, I think, something ethereal about i —the square root of minus one. I remember first hearing about it at school. It seemed an odd beast at that time—an intruder hovering on the edge of reality.

Usually familiarity dulls this sense of the bizarre, but in the case of i it was the reverse: over the years the sense of its surreal nature intensified. It seemed that it was impossible to write mathematics that described the real world in …

I and i

[신간의 별자리x] 우리/미술, 그리고 ‘슬픔의 박물관’

I have developed "tennis elbow" from lugging this book around the past four weeks, but it is worth the pain, the effort, and the aspirin. It is also worth the (relatively speaking) bargain price. Including appendixes, this book contains 894 pages of text. The entire panorama of the neural sciences is surveyed and examined, and it is comprehensive in its scope, from genomes to social behaviors. The editors explicitly state that the book is designed as "an introductory text for students of biology, behavior, and medicine," but it is hard to imagine any audience, interested in any fragment of neuroscience at any level of sophistication, that would not enjoy this book. The editors have done a masterful job of weaving together the biologic, the behavioral, and the clinical sciences into a single tapestry in which everyone from the molecular biologist to the practicing psychiatrist can find and appreciate his or

Principles of Neural Science

The organization of behavior: A neuropsychological theory

Physical Review B

Rapid digital technology advancement has resulted in a tremendous increase in computing tasks imposing stringent energy efficiency and area efficiency requirements on next-generation computing. To meet the growing data-driven demand, in-memory computing and transistor-based computing have emerged as potent technologies for the implementation of matrix and logic computing. However, to fulfil the future computing requirements new materials are urgently needed to complement the existing Si complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor technology and new technologies must be developed to enable further diversification of electronics and their applications. The abundance and rich variety of electronic properties of two-dimensional materials have endowed them with the potential to enhance computing energy efficiency while enabling continued device downscaling to a feature size below 5 nm. In this Review, from the perspective of matrix and logic computing, we discuss the opportunities, progress and challenges of integrating two-dimensional materials with in-memory computing and transistor-based computing technologies. This Review discusses the recent progress and future prospects of two-dimensional materials for next-generation nanoelectronics.

Two-dimensional materials for next-generation computing technologies.

As conventional circuits based on field-effect transistors are approaching their physical limits due to quantum phenomena, semi-floating gate transistors have emerged as an alternative ultrafast and silicon-compatible technology. Here, we show a quasi-non-volatile memory featuring a semi-floating gate architecture with band-engineered van der Waals heterostructures. This two-dimensional semi-floating gate memory demonstrates 156 times longer refresh time with respect to that of dynamic random access memory and ultrahigh-speed writing operations on nanosecond timescales. The semi-floating gate architecture greatly enhances the writing operation performance and is approximately 106 times faster than other memories based on two-dimensional materials. The demonstrated characteristics suggest that the quasi-non-volatile memory has the potential to bridge the gap between volatile and non-volatile memory technologies and decrease the power consumption required for frequent refresh operations, enabling a high-speed and low-power random access memory.

A semi-floating gate memory based on van der Waals heterostructures for quasi-non-volatile applications.

Just as biological synapses provide basic functions for the nervous system, artificial synaptic devices serve as the fundamental building blocks of neuromorphic networks; thus, developing novel artificial synapses is essential for neuromorphic computing. By exploiting the band alignment between 2D inorganic and organic semiconductors, the first multi-functional synaptic transistor based on a molybdenum disulfide (MoS2 )/perylene-3,4,9,10-tetracarboxylic dianhydride (PTCDA) hybrid heterojunction, with remarkable short-term plasticity (STP) and long-term plasticity (LTP), is reported. Owing to the elaborate design of the energy band structure, both robust electrical and optical modulation are achieved through carriers transfer at the interface of the heterostructure, which is still a challenging task to this day. In electrical modulation, synaptic inhibition and excitation can be achieved simultaneously in the same device by gate voltage tuning. Notably, a minimum inhibition of 3% and maximum facilitation of 500% can be obtained by increasing the electrical number, and the response to different frequency signals indicates a dynamic filtering characteristic. It exhibits flexible tunability of both STP and LTP and synaptic weight changes of up to 60, far superior to previous work in optical modulation. The fully 2D MoS2 /PTCDA hybrid heterojunction artificial synapse opens up a whole new path for the urgent need for neuromorphic computation devices.

A MoS 2 /PTCDA Hybrid Heterojunction Synapse with Efficient Photoelectric Dual Modulation and Versatility

Charge-trap memory with high-κ dielectric materials is considered to be a promising candidate for next-generation memory devices. Ultrathin layered two-dimensional (2D) materials like graphene and MoS2 have been receiving much attention because of their fantastic physical properties and potential applications in electronic devices. Here, we report on a dual-gate charge-trap memory device composed of a few-layer MoS2 channel and a three-dimensional (3D) Al2O3/HfO2/Al2O3 charge-trap gate stack. Because of the extraordinary trapping ability of both electrons and holes in HfO2, the MoS2 memory device exhibits an unprecedented memory window exceeding 20 V. Importantly, with a back gate the window size can be effectively tuned from 15.6 to 21 V; the program/erase current ratio can reach up to 10(4), allowing for multibit information storage. Moreover, the device shows a high endurance of hundreds of cycles and a stable retention of ∼ 28% charge loss after 10 years, which is drastically lower than ever reported MoS2 flash memory. The combination of 2D materials with traditional high-κ charge-trap gate stacks opens up an exciting field of nonvolatile memory devices.

Tunable charge-trap memory based on few-layer MoS2.

The burgeoning 2D semiconductors can maintain excellent device electrostatics with an ultranarrow channel length and can realize tunneling by electrostatic gating to avoid deprivation of band-edge sharpness resulting from chemical doping, which make them perfect candidates for tunneling field effect transistors. Here this study presents SnSe2 /WSe2 van der Waals heterostructures with SnSe2 as the p-layer and WSe2 as the n-layer. The energy band alignment changes from a staggered gap band offset (type-II) to a broken gap (type-III) when changing the negative back-gate voltage to positive, resulting in the device operating as a rectifier diode (rectification ratio ~104 ) or an n-type tunneling field effect transistor, respectively. A steep average subthreshold swing of 80 mV dec-1 for exceeding two decades of drain current with a minimum of 37 mV dec-1 at room temperature is observed, and an evident trend toward negative differential resistance is also accomplished for the tunneling field effect transistor due to the high gate efficiency of 0.36 for single gate devices. The ION /IOFF ratio of the transfer characteristics is >106 , accompanying a high ON current >10-5 A. This work presents original phenomena of multilayer 2D van der Waals heterostructures which can be applied to low-power consumption devices.

David Wei Zhang

Papers

Two-dimensional materials for next-generation computing technologies.

A semi-floating gate memory based on van der Waals heterostructures for quasi-non-volatile applications.

A MoS 2 /PTCDA Hybrid Heterojunction Synapse with Efficient Photoelectric Dual Modulation and Versatility

Tunable charge-trap memory based on few-layer MoS2.

Tunable SnSe2 /WSe2 Heterostructure Tunneling Field Effect Transistor.