Cellulose nanofiber paper as an ultra flexible nonvolatile memory.

Kazuki Nagashima,Wilfried Vandervorst,Jo De Boeck,Malgorzata Jurczak,Gang Meng,Yong He,Takuya Kitaoka,Sakon Rahong,Masaki Kanai,Hirotaka Koga,Takeshi Yanagida,Fuwei Zhuge,Masaya Nogi,Umberto Celano

doi:10.1038/srep05532

Abstract

On the development of flexible electronics, a highly flexible nonvolatile memory, which is an important circuit component for the portability, is necessary. However, the flexibility of existing nonvolatile memory has been limited, e.g. the smallest radius into which can be bent has been millimeters range, due to the difficulty in maintaining memory properties while bending. Here we propose the ultra flexible resistive nonvolatile memory using Ag-decorated cellulose nanofiber paper (CNP). The Ag-decorated CNP devices showed the stable nonvolatile memory effects with 6 orders of ON/OFF resistance ratio and the small standard deviation of switching voltage distribution. The memory performance of CNP devices can be maintained without any degradation when being bent down to the radius of 350 μm, which is the smallest value compared to those of existing any flexible nonvolatile memories. Thus the present device using abundant and mechanically flexible CNP offers a highly flexible nonvolatile memory for portable flexible electronics.

Highlights

On the development of flexible electronics, a highly flexible nonvolatile memory, which is an important circuit component for the portability, is necessary
The memory effect in Ag-decorated cellulose nanofiber paper (CNP) device was firstly examined by utilizing devices fabricated onto the rigid Si substrate before examining its flexibility
The thickness of Ag-decorated CNP can be readily controlled by varying the amount of cellulose nanofibers slurry

Summary

Introduction

On the development of flexible electronics, a highly flexible nonvolatile memory, which is an important circuit component for the portability, is necessary. The memory performance of CNP devices can be maintained without any degradation when being bent down to the radius of 350 mm, which is the smallest value compared to those of existing any flexible nonvolatile memories. Flexible electronics is an emerging research field in electronics, which has been intensively investigated in last decade[1] Novel devices such as rollable display, conformable sensor, biodegradable electronics and other flexible electronic applications have been demonstrated and they have been achieved by utilizing mechanically flexible electronic circuit components[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12]. We found the excellent robustness of mechanical and electrical properties of the present CNP memory devices even for the bending radius of down to 350 mm, which is the smallest value so far reported for flexible nonvolatile memories

Methods

Results

Conclusion