Bioinspired Polydopamine-Based Resistive-Switching Memory on Cotton Fabric for Wearable Neuromorphic Device Applications

Fabric-based electronic textiles (e-textiles) have been investigated for the fabrication of high-performance wearable electronic devices with good durability. Current e-textile technology is limited by not only the delicate characteristics of the materials used but also by the fabric substrates, which impose constraints on the fabrication process. A polydopamine (PDA)-intercalated fabric memory (PiFAM) with a resistive random access memory (RRAM) architecture is reported for fabric-based wearable devices, as a step towards promising neuromorphic devices beyond the most simple. It is composed of interwoven cotton yarns. A solution-based dip-coating method is used to create a functional core-shell yarn. The outer shell is coated with PDA and the inner shell is coated with aluminum (Al) surrounding the core yarn, which serves as a backbone. The Al shell serves as the RRAM electrode and the PDA is a resistive-switching layer. These functional yarns are then interwoven to create the RRAM in a lattice point. Untreated yarn is intercalated between adjacent functional yarns to avoid cell-to-cell interference. The PiFAM is applied to implement a synapse, and the feasibility of a neuromorphic device with pattern recognition accuracy of approximate to 81% and the potential for application in wearable and flexible electronic platforms is demonstrated.