Highly transparent flexible artificial nociceptor based on forming-free ITO memristor

Designing a flexible transparent electronic device with biological functions is of great interest for the future wearable integrated artificial intelligence equipment. Nociceptor is a vitally important receptor of sensory neuron, which is responsible for providing a warning signal by recognizing noxious stimuli to reduce potential physical injury. Here, a flexible transparent artificial nociceptor device is demonstrated to simulate the biological nociceptor functions based on the indium tin oxide (ITO) memristor, which exhibits forming-free and reproducible threshold resistive switching behaviors. This structurally simple memristor can imitate the key features of biological nociceptor, including threshold, relaxation, and no adaptation behaviors and sensitization phenomena of hyperalgesia and allodynia upon external stimuli. Finally, an alarm system is built to demonstrate the simplicity and feasibility of this artificial nociceptor for future neuromorphic systems. These results indicate a potential application of the ITO memristor in the future flexible invisible neuromorphic cognitive platform. Published under an exclusive license by AIP Publishing.

Automated summary

This study demonstrates a flexible transparent artificial nociceptor device that can simulate key features of biological nociceptors, including threshold, relaxation, hyperalgesia, and allodynia in response to external stimuli. Additionally, an alarm system was built to showcase the simplicity and feasibility of this artificial nociceptor for future neuromorphic systems.