Programmable Memristive Optical Antenna Via Plasmonic Tunneling Junction

Optoelectronic memristors, integrating light stimulation or readout onto conventional memristors, have gained significant development for artificial vision systems and neuromorphic computing. However, memristive optical nanoantennas that allow electrical writing and optical reading often suffer from stability and reliability owing to their inherent nanoscale sizes, hindering the programmability. Here, we present a programmable electrically written and optically read memristor based on a planar Al-AlO_x-ITO tunneling junction decorated with Au nanoparticles. The plasmonic nanocavity enhances the electron-to-photon conversion efficiency, and the large tunneling area ensures reliable resistance switching. Light emission arises from inelastic electron tunneling in the high-resistance state and is quenched upon switching to the low-resistance state. By programming the write and readout voltages, a proof of concept for the storage and display of images in a 1 × 8 pixel array is demonstrated. Our work pushes the usage of a memristive plasmonic tunneling junction as an ultracompact optoelectrical memristor for integrated artificial neural networks.