Synaptic Iontronic Devices for Brain-Mimicking Functions: Fundamentals and Applications

Inspired by the information transmission mechanism in the central nervous systems of life, synapse-mimicking devices have been designed and fabricated for the purpose of breaking the bottleneck of von Neumann architecture and realizing the construction of effective hardware-based artificial intelligence. In this case, synaptic iontronic devices, dealing with current information with ions instead of electrons, have attracted enormous scientific interests owing to their unique characteristics provided by ions, such as the designability of charge carriers and the diversity of chemical regulation. Herein, the basic conception, working mechanism, performance metrics, and advanced applications of synaptic iontronic devices based on three-terminal transistors and two-terminal memristors are systematically reviewed and comprehensively discussed. This Review provides a prospect on how to realize artificial synaptic functions based on the regulation of ions and raises a series of further challenges unsolved in this area.