Oxygen-Migration-Based Spintronic Device Emulating a Biological Synapse

Electronic emulation of the biological synapse (the memory and learning element of the brain) is an important step toward realizing brain-inspired computing systems. The authors demonstrate a voltage-controlled magnetic device, based on oxygen migration, that emulates major functionalities of a biological synapse such as potentiation; depression; plasticity that depends on spike magnitude, rate, and timing; and short- to long-term memory formation. Additionally, there is separation of read and write paths, and an ability to be programmed with ``negative weighting'', which helps to overcome the disadvantages of memristor synapses.