Chalcogenide materials for optoelectronic memory and neuromorphic computing

Chalcogenide phase change materials are currently under intensive academic and industrial investigations, since it shows nonvolatile reversible switching between amorphous and crystalline states under electrical or optical pulses. In this chapter, we will briefly review the history and basic properties of the chalcogenides. The underlying atomic models that allow precise controlling of the conductance or transmittance states of phase change materials will be described. Then we will introduce the applications covering mature optical disk technology and emerging all-photonic nonvolatile memory. At last, the utilization of chalcogenides in neuromorphic computing, including electronic artificial neural network and on-chip photonic neural network, will be illustrated, highlighting the energy-efficient nature of in-memory computing. These results open the way for disruptive applications in scalable non-von Neumann computing paradigm.