Compact artificial neuron based on anti-ferroelectric transistor

Neuromorphic machines are intriguing for building energy-efficient intelligent systems, where spiking neurons are pivotal components. Recently, memristive neurons with promising bio-plausibility have been developed, but with limited reliability, bulky capacitors or additional reset circuits. Here, we propose an anti-ferroelectric field-effect transistor neuron based on the inherent polarization and depolarization of Hf_0.2Zr_0.8O₂ anti-ferroelectric film to meet these challenges. The intrinsic accumulated polarization/spontaneous depolarization of Hf_0.2Zr_0.8O₂ films implements the integration/leaky behavior of neurons, avoiding external capacitors and reset circuits. Moreover, the anti-ferroelectric neuron exhibits low energy consumption (37 fJ/spike), high endurance (>10¹²), high uniformity and high stability. We further construct a two-layer fully ferroelectric spiking neural networks that combines anti-ferroelectric neurons and ferroelectric synapses, achieving 96.8% recognition accuracy on the Modified National Institute of Standards and Technology dataset. This work opens the way to emulate neurons with anti-ferroelectric materials and provides a promising approach to building high-efficient neuromorphic hardware.