Sabina Spiga is Research Director at the National Research Council of Italy (CNR), Institute for Microelectronics and Microsystems (IMM). She received her Degree in Physics from the University of Bologna in 1995 and earned a Ph.D. in Materials Science from the University of Milan in 2002.

Her research focuses on the development of memristive devices that exploit ionic and electronic phenomena at the nanoscale to emulate synaptic and neuronal function in hardware, enabling advances in neuromorphic and unconventional information processing.

Spiga has served as Principal Investigator for CNR in several national and Horizon 2020/Horizon Europe projects, including MeM-Scales, Neuram³ and Neurotech, and is currently involved in the European IPCEI ME/CT initiative. She is presently the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics.

Title: Oxide-based memristors and ionic transistors: materials and device engineering for brain-inspired information processing

Abstract: Oxide-based memristors are emerging as key enabling technologies for neuromorphic hardware and unconventional computing paradigms. These devices can emulate biological synaptic and neuronal functionalities, while also serving as compact computational units for in-memory processing and reservoir computing architectures [1].
In this talk, I will present an overview of our recent work on two-terminal oxide memristors and three-terminal ionic transistors, also known as electrochemical random-access memories (ECRAMs). The discussion will focus on materials and device engineering, switching mechanisms, and strategies to exploit their intrinsic properties for brain-inspired computing primitives and unconventional information processing.
In the first part, I will demonstrate how the programmable and nonlinear characteristics of non-volatile resistance switching Pt/HfO₂/TiN memristors can be leveraged to implement a memristor-driven circuit enabling single-node reservoir computing [2]. This approach efficiently addresses nonlinear classification tasks and real-time information processing. The second part of the presentation will focus on volatile electrochemical memristors based on Ag/SiOₓ/Pt structures [3,4], and how their properties can be tailored by inserting an ultrathin Al₂O₃ layer (1–2 nm), deposited by atomic layer deposition at the SiOₓ/Ag interface (Figures 1a,b). I will discuss how the interplay between switching kinetics and relaxation dynamics governs device operation, and how engineering multiple relaxation time scales which are crucial for brain-inspired temporal information processing.
Finally, I will introduce our ongoing work on three-terminal ECRAM devices based on WO₃/HfO₂/WO₃ stacks. These devices exhibit bulk, gate-controlled ionic switching, enabling analog, linear, and energy-efficient conductance modulation, which is highly promising for future scalable neuromorphic systems.

[1] A. Mehonic et al., APL Materials 12, 109201, 2024
[2] M. Escudero et al., Adv. Intell. Syst. 8, 2500508, 2026
[3] M. Dutta et al., Adv. Electron. Mater. 10, 2400221, 2024