The fabrication of LiNbO₃ memristors for electronic synapses using oxygen annealing

Based on the LiNbO₃ (LN) single crystal thin film prepared using Ar⁺ etching, an LN thin film memristor was fabricated by oxygen annealing. Atomic force microscope, scanning electron microscope and electron paramagnetic resonance test results show that the method uniformly reduces the amount of oxygen vacancies on the surface of the material. The current-voltage scanning (I-V scanning), retention and endurance test results show that this method effectively reduces the possibility of breakdown and increases the retention and endurance performance of the device. By adjusting the parameters of the electric pulse, the annealed sample successfully emulated spike-rate dependent plasticity, pulse-paired facilitation, post-tetanic potentiation, Ebbinghaus forgetting curve and the spike-time dependent plasticity. These results indicate that the device prepared herein could be used as an electronic synapse in the field of brain-like neuromorphic computing systems.