Optical neural networks (ONNs) herald a new era in information and
communication technologies and have implemented various intelligent
applications. In an ONN, the activation function (AF) is a crucial component
determining the network performances and on-chip AF devices are still in
development. Here, we first demonstrate on-chip reconfigurable AF devices with
phase activation fulfilled by dual-functional graphene/silicon (Gra/Si)
heterojunctions. With optical modulation and detection in one device, time
delays are shorter, energy consumption is lower, reconfigurability is higher
and the device footprint is smaller than other on-chip AF strategies. The
experimental modulation voltage (power) of our Gra/Si heterojunction achieves
as low as 1 V (0.5 mW), superior to many pure silicon counterparts. In the
photodetection aspect, a high responsivity of over 200 mA/W is realized.
Special nonlinear functions generated are fed into a complex-valued ONN to
challenge handwritten letters and image recognition tasks, showing improved
accuracy and potential of high-efficient, all-component-integration on-chip
ONN. Our results offer new insights for on-chip ONN devices and pave the way to
high-performance integrated optoelectronic computing circuits