Angstrom Scale Ionic Memristors’ Engineering with van der Waals Materials: A Route to Highly Tunable Memory States

Abstract

Memristors that mimic brain functions are crucial for energy-efficient neuromorphic devices. Ion channels that emulate biological synapses are still in the early stages of development, especially the tunability of memory states. Here, we demonstrate that cations such as K⁺, Na⁺, Ca²⁺, and Al³⁺ intercalated in the interlayer spaces of vermiculite result in highly confined channels of size 3–5 Å. They host exotic memristor properties through ion exchange dynamics, even at high salt concentrations of 1 M. The bipolar memristor characteristics observed are tunable with frequency, geometric asymmetry, ion concentration, and intercalants. Notably, we observe polarization-flipping memristor behavior in two cases: one with Al³⁺ ions and another with devices having a geometric asymmetry ratio greater than 15. This inversion is attributed to the overscreening of counterions due to their accumulation at the channel entrance. Our results suggest that ion exchange dynamics, ion–ion interactions, and ion accumulation/depletion mechanisms, particularly with multivalent ions, can be harnessed to develop advanced memristor devices.