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Neuromorphic properties of flexible carbon nanotube/polydimethylsiloxane nanocomposites

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Abstract

Neuromorphic materials are promising for fabricating artificial synapses for flexible electronics, but they are usually expensive and lack a good combination of electronic and mechanical properties. In this paper, low-cost flexible carbon nanotube/polydimethylsiloxane (CNT/PDMS) nanocomposites were prepared by solution processing. Their neuromorphic properties were studied as a function of PDMS macromolecular network structure. Specifically, the structural defects of the polymer network originating from intermolecular crosslinking reactions were tuned to tailor the electron transfer between carbon nanotubes, resulting in a recorded low switching power consumption (1.40 × 10–10 W) and a high working bending radius of curvature (5 mm) compared to other organic, flexible neuromorphic materials. As-fabricated CNT/PDMS composites demonstrate robust performance for 104 operating cycles under mechanical deformation. Emulation of synaptic functions was also presented, showing long-term potentiation (LTP) and long-term depression (LTD) characteristics. These results lay a foundation for networked polymer-based multifunctional nanocomposites for flexible neuromorphic electronic devices.

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Funding

The authors appreciate the funding support from the National Science Foundation and Texas A&M President’s Excellent Fund.

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Author notes

  1. Ruochen Liu, Jae Gwang Kim, and Prashant Dhakal equally contributed to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, 77843, USA

    Ruochen Liu, Jae Gwang Kim, Aolin Hou & Shiren Wang

  2. Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, 77843, USA

    Prashant Dhakal, Wei Li & Shiren Wang

  3. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, 77843, USA

    Jun Ma & Shiren Wang

  4. Department of Computer Engineering, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY, 14623, USA

    Cory Merkel

  5. Department Mechanical Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, 77843, USA

    Jingjing Qiu

  6. Department of Biology, Institute of Neuroscience, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, 77843, USA

    Mark Zoran

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  1. Ruochen Liu
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Contributions

S.W. conceived the research. S. W., R. L., and J. K. designed the experiments. R. L., J. K., P. D., A. H., W.L., and J. M. prepared samples and measured the properties. R. L., J. K., J. Q., C. M., M. Z., and S. W. analyzed the data and wrote the manuscript with comments and inputs from all authors.

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Correspondence to Shiren Wang.

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Liu, R., Kim, J.G., Dhakal, P. et al. Neuromorphic properties of flexible carbon nanotube/polydimethylsiloxane nanocomposites. Adv Compos Hybrid Mater 6, 14 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42114-022-00599-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42114-022-00599-9

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