A Dynamic Random Access Memory Based on a Conjugated Copolymer Containing Electron‐Donor and ‐Acceptor Moieties

Abstract

Electroactive organic and polymeric materials are alternatives to traditional Si, Ge, and GaAs semiconductors that have to face the problem of scaling-down in cell size. Several types of organic electronics and devices, including light-emitting diodes, transistors, lasers, photovoltaic cells, switches, and memories, have been realized. Recently, flash (rewritable) memory and write-once readmany-times (WORM) memory based on polymeric materials has been demonstrated. Polymer memories exhibit simple structures, good scalability, low-cost potential, 3D stacking capability, and a large capacity for data storage. Rather than encoding “0” and “1” as the amount of charge stored in a cell, as in silicon-based devices, polymer memory stores data, for instance, based on the high and low conductivity response to an applied voltage. In the pioneering work, the polymers were used as polyelectrolytes and as matrices for dyes, gold nano-particles, or organic donor–acceptor (DA) systems, and we have demonstrated a flash memory and a WORM memory based on a nonconjugated and a conjugated copolymer, respectively, containing lanthanide complexes. In this work, we report a novel memory device based on a conjugated copolymer (PFOxPy, structure shown in Figure 1a) that contains both electron-donor and -acceptor groups but no metal complex. In contrast to the nonvolatile flash and WORM memory devices based on polymers containing metal complexes, the device based on PFOxPy is