On Using the Volatile Mem-Capacitive Effect of TiO₂ Resistive Random Access Memory to Mimic the Synaptic Forgetting Process

Abstract

In this work, we report on mimicking the synaptic forgetting process using the volatile mem-capacitive effect of a resistive random access memory (RRAM). TiO₂ dielectric, which is known to show volatile memory operations due to migration of inherent oxygen vacancies, was used to achieve the volatile mem-capacitive effect. By placing the volatile RRAM candidate along with SiO₂ at the gate of a MOS capacitor, a volatile capacitance change resembling the forgetting nature of a human brain is demonstrated. Furthermore, the memory operation in the MOS capacitor does not require a current flow through the gate dielectric indicating the feasibility of obtaining low power memory operations. Thus, the mem-capacitive effect of volatile RRAM candidates can be attractive to the future neuromorphic systems for implementing the forgetting process of a human brain.