Amorphous silicon photoconductive arrays for artificial neural networks

We have demonstrated an electronic implementation of an artificial neural network with 14,400 synaptic connections of variable strength using an array of a:Si:H photoconductors. This neural network has been configured as a Hopfield associative memory, and used to successfully perform simple pattern recognition. Our initial results suggested that, using these a-Si:H photoconductive arrays as the optically programmable synaptic matrix, neural networks of large sizes may be achieved. This paper describes the fabrication and device characteristics of a-Si:H photoconductive arrays as well as a model application of a neural network.