Novel Authentic and Ultrafast Organic Photorecorders Enhanced by AIE‐Active Polymer Electrets via Interlayer Charge Recombination

Abstract

AbstractOrganic photonic memory, featuring a variety of glamorously light‐driven characteristics, is rapidly growing into an indispensable building block for next‐generation optical communication systems. However, the ambiguity of their operating mechanism associated with the limitation of photoadaptive materials as an electronics promoter results in the slow development of photonic transistor‐based devices. In this study, the conjugated polymers composed of donor–acceptor motifs with typical aggregation‐induced emission (AIE) behaviors are designed and successfully discover high‐performance photoprogrammable memory. Moreover, the mechanism of photoboosted recording behavior, attributed to the recombination of the formed interlayer excitons right after simultaneous excitation without applying vertical and parallel electric‐field at the interface in‐between active semiconductor and AIE polymers, is cautiously corroborated by steady‐state PL and pulse PL measurements. The AIE‐polymer memory devices perform ultrafast photoresponse time of 0.1 ms, an outstanding current switch ratio up to 106, and retention stability over 40 000 s without significant dissipation. Furthermore, photoresponsive AIE‐polymer electrets not only modulate the memory performance through the emission wavelength but easily switch storage behavior of nonvolatile memory from flash to WORM by adjusting the torsion‐angle through the motif of the donor and acceptor moieties. These findings open an avenue for designing conjugated polymer electret for ultrafast optical storage devices.