Metal–oxide–semiconductor junctions are the building blocks of modern electronics and can provide a variety of functionalities, from memory to computing. The technology, however, faces constraints in terms of further miniaturization and compatibility with post–von Neumann computing architectures. Manipulation of structural—rather than electronic—states could provide a path to ultrascaled low-power functional devices, but the electrical control of such states is challenging. Here we report electronically accessible long-lived structural states in vanadium dioxide that can provide a scheme for data storage and processing. The states can be arbitrarily manipulated on short timescales and tracked beyond 10,000 s after excitation, exhibiting features similar to glasses. In two-terminal devices with channel lengths down to 50 nm, sub-nanosecond electrical excitation can occur with an energy consumption as small as 100 fJ. These glass-like functional devices could outperform conventional metal–oxide–semiconductor electronics in terms of speed, energy consumption and miniaturization, as well as provide a route to neuromorphic computation and multilevel memories.

金属-氧化物-半导体结是现代电子产品的基石，可以提供从内存到计算的各种功能。然而，该技术在进一步小型化和与后冯诺依曼计算架构的兼容性方面面临限制。对结构态而非电子态的操纵可以为超大规模低功耗功能设备提供一条途径，但这种状态的电气控制具有挑战性。在这里，我们报告了二氧化钒中电子可访问的长寿命结构状态，它可以为数据存储和处理提供方案。这些状态可以在短时间尺度上任意操纵，并在激发后超过 10,000 秒后被跟踪，表现出类似于眼镜的特征。在通道长度低至 50 nm 的两端器件中，亚纳秒电激发可发生低至 100 fJ 的能量消耗。这些类似玻璃的功能器件在速度、能耗和小型化方面可以胜过传统的金属氧化物半导体电子器件，并为神经形态计算和多级存储器提供了一条途径。