Ferroelectrically programmable lanthanide luminescent memristor

Spatial-light computing requires rewritable, multilevel and persistent optical weights, but many implementations rely on volatile modulators or static power. Here we report a CMOS-imaged luminescent memristor array in which ferroelectric domain switching in Er/Yb-doped PMN-PT single crystals programs non-volatile photoluminescence (PL) states. Domain reconfiguration tunes the local crystal-field symmetry of lanthanide emitters, enabling 16 analogue levels, retention over 27 h, endurance beyond 105 cycles and microsecond-scale state programming with zero electrical standby power for state retention. An 8 × 8 array, addressed by a diffractive optical element and read by a proximal CMOS sensor, converts stored emissive states into a single-frame intensity map and achieves 94.02% pixel-wise state recognition using calibration-aware decoding. The array implements single-step optical linear weighting, while the same decoded weights support hybrid optical-electrical handwritten-digit inference approaching a 32-bit floating-point software baseline. These results establish a non-volatile, image-addressable emissive weight element for photonic computing. Spatial-light computing is limited by the lack of compact, non-volatile, rewritable analog devices. Wen et al. report a ferroelectric crystal that converts lanthanide emission into a rewritable, multilevel memory, allowing stored optical states to be read and used as persistent weights for neuromorphic computing.