Chalcogenide Materials Based Threshold Switching

Neuromorphic AI is crucial for overcoming the energy bottleneck of current AI technologies. Chalcogenide-based Ovonic Threshold Switching (OTS) memristors have recently emerged as promising candidates for in-memory and neuromorphic computing. These devices offer significant improvements over conventional 1S1R structures in terms of energy consumption, simplicity, speed, scalability, and reliability. 

This talk will review the latest development trends in emerging memristors for neuromorphic computing. It will cover the principles of OTS as both selectors and selector-only-memory devices, including their materials, switching and memory mechanisms, reliability, and variability. The applications of OTS as synaptic and neuronal devices will be addressed, and future research directions in this field will be discussed.

Speaker biography

Prof. Weidong Zhang is a professor of nano-electronics at Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU), where he leads pioneering research on emerging memory devices. LJMU’s engineering research has been ranked 11th and 26th in the last two UK government research assessments. Professor Zhang has served as the principal investigator and co-investigator of a number of research projects, securing over £4.5 million in funding for LJMU, including eight EPSRC research grants. For the past 18 years, he has successfully led LJMU’s official collaboration with IMEC’s memory device group, which partners with industry giant such as Intel, Micron, Samsung, Western Digital, SK Hynix, and Toshiba. His current research interests include the characterization and quality assessment of resistive switching, threshold switching, MTJ, and 2D memristor devices, as well as CMOS devices based on Si, Ge, and 2D materials, and GaN/GaO power devices. 

Prof. Zhang has co-authored over 150 publications with high ISI impact factors, including 10 papers presented at the flagship IEEE International Electron Device Meeting (IEDM) and 7 papers at the prestigious IEEE VLSI Symposium, among the most prolific in the UK. He has been a panel member for the UKRI/EPSRC Roundtable on Neuromorphic Computing 2024, the UK Semiconductor Strategy Roundtable 2023, and the EPSRC New Horizon grant panel in 2022. He has served as a TPC/session chair and has delivered invited talks and tutorials regularly at international conferences such as IPFA, ICSICT, ASICON, eFuture. He was a reviewer for Singapore Government’s NATIONAL RESEARCH FOUNDATION, and an external consultant/reviewer for Albion VC.