A New Memristor with 2D Ti₃ C₂ T_x MXene Flakes as an Artificial Bio-Synapse

Two-dimensional (2D) materials have attracted extensive research interest in academia due to their excellent electrochemical properties and broad application prospects. Among them, 2D transition metal carbides (Ti₃ C₂ T_x ) show semiconductor characteristics and are studied widely. However, there are few academic reports on the use of 2D MXene materials as memristors. In this work, reported is a memristor based on MXene Ti₃ C₂ T_x flakes. After electroforming, Al/Ti₃ C₂ T_x /Pt devices exhibit repeatable resistive switching (RS) behavior. More interestingly, the resistance of this device can be continuously modulated under the pulse sequence with 10 ns pulse width, and the pulse width of 10 ns is much lower than that in other reported work. Moreover, on the nanosecond scale, the transition from short-term plasticity to long-term plasticity is achieved. These two properties indicate that this device is favorable for ultrafast biological synapse applications and high-efficiency training of neural networks. Through the exploration of the microstructure, Ti vacancies and partial oxidation are proposed as the origins of the physical mechanism of RS behavior. This work reveals that 2D MXene Ti₃ C₂ T_x flakes have excellent potential for use in memristor devices, which may open the door for more functions and applications.