Article abstract


Nature Materials 3, 918 - 922 (2004)
doi:10.1038/nmat1269

Subject Categories: Polymers | Electronic materials | Surface and thin films

Programmable polymer thin film and non-volatile memory device

Jianyong Ouyang1, Chih-Wei Chu1, Charles R. Szmanda2, Liping Ma1 and Yang Yang1


Building on the success of organic electronic devices, such as light-emitting diodes and field-effect transistors, procedures for fabricating non-volatile organic memory devices are now being explored. Here, we demonstrate a novel organic memory device fabricated by solution processing. Programmable electrical bistability was observed in a device made from a polystyrene film containing gold nanoparticles and 8-hydroxyquinoline sandwiched between two metal electrodes. The as-prepared device, which is in a low-conductivity state, displays an abrupt transition to a high-conductivity state under an external bias of 2.8 V. These two states differ in conductivity by about four orders of magnitude. Applying a negative bias of 1.8 V causes the device to return to the low-conductivity state. The electronic transition is attributed to the electric-field-induced charge transfer between the gold nanoparticles and 8-hydroxyquinoline. The transition from the low- to the high-conductivity state takes place in nanoseconds, and is non-volatile, indicating that the device may be used for low-cost, high-density memory storage.

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  1. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA
  2. Rohm and Haas Electronic Materials Company L.L.C., 455 Forest Street, Marlborough, 01752, USA

Correspondence to: Yang Yang1 e-mail: yangy@ucla.edu

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