Recently, a team comprising faculty and students from the College of Physics and Optoelectronic Engineering at Beijing University of Technology has achieved a significant breakthrough in the domains of ferroelectric polarization-regulated programmable photovoltaic performance and visual computing applications. Their groundbreaking research, titled "Polarization-modulated programmable photovoltaic performance of a designed ferroelectric heterojunction," has been published online in the internationally renowned journal 'Nature Communications'.

In this study, the researchers accomplished a notable enhancement in photovoltaic performance and achieved current polarity reversal. They achieved this by designing an asymmetric heterojunction device that incorporates a two-dimensional van der Waals ferroelectric material, CuInP₂S₆, along with graphene. Furthermore, the study elucidated the synergistic mechanism involving Cu⁺ ion migration, interface barriers, and the transport of photogenerated carriers.

Leveraging the programmable photoelectric response characteristics of the device, the team successfully executed visual preprocessing tasks. These tasks included image edge detection, achieving an impressive identification rate F-score of approximately 1, and binary pattern classification, attaining a perfect accuracy rate of 100%. These accomplishments lay a robust theoretical and experimental groundwork for the development of high-performance, low-power-consumption next-generation neuromorphic vision and image processing systems.