Artificial Sensory Neuron Based on Oxide Transistors for Neuromorphic Tactile Perception

ABSTRACT Artificial neurons are considered an effective approach to alleviating the challenges of large data throughput and high‐power consumption in electronic tactile sensory systems. However, emerging artificial neuron implementations beyond conventional silicon circuits are still limited in enabling low‐power operation and large‐scale scalability. Oxide semiconductors provide an energy‐efficient platform for neuromorphic circuits, owing to their low leakage current, while offering fast, gate‐controlled switching. Here, we report an Axon‐Hillock (A‐H) artificial neuron circuit based on solution‐processed indium oxide (In 2 O 3 ) transistors. The neuron circuit contains a two‐stage high‐gain (∼180 V/V) inverter composed of four In 2 O 3 transistors, a leakage transistor, and a capacitor, exhibiting >20 kHz frequency response, tunable output spike frequency up to 500 Hz, and ∼62 nW power consumption. Integrated with a pressure sensor, the neuron effectively converts tactile pressure into spike trains at the sensing interface. We further demonstrate in‐sensor spike encoding of tactile stimuli and validate texture recognition with a spiking reservoir network (SRN), achieving ∼88% test accuracy over 20 fabric classes. These results demonstrate the feasibility of implementing solution‐processed oxide materials in energy‐efficient neuromorphic electronics.