Abstract
With the emergence of wearable or disposable electronics, there grows a demand for a flash memory realizable on various flexible substrates. Nevertheless, it has been challenging to develop a flash memory that simultaneously exhibits a significant level of flexibility and performance. This is mainly due to the scarcity of flexible dielectric materials with insulating properties sufficient for a flash memory, which involves dual dielectric layers, respectively, responsible for tunneling and blocking of charges. Here we report ultra-flexible organic flash memories based on polymer dielectrics prepared by initiated chemical vapor deposition. Using their near-ideal dielectric characteristics, we demonstrate flash memories bendable down to a radius of 300 μm that exhibits a relatively long-projected retention with a programming voltage on par with the present industrial standards. The proposed memory technology is then applied to non-conventional substrates, such as papers, to demonstrate its feasibility in a wide range of applications.
Highlights
With the emergence of wearable or disposable electronics, there grows a demand for a flash memory realizable on various flexible substrates
The solution processing used for most polymeric dielectric layers makes it difficult to use them in flash memories due to the complexity involved in the formation a tunneling dielectric layer (TDL) floating gate (FG) (Al) blocking dielectric layer (BDL)
Two iCVD processed polymer films of poly(1,3,5-trimethyl-1,3,5-trivinyl cyclotrisiloxane) and poly(ethylene glycol dimethacrylate)[52], whose chemical structures are shown in Fig. 1c, are employed for TDL and BDL, respectively
Summary
With the emergence of wearable or disposable electronics, there grows a demand for a flash memory realizable on various flexible substrates. Their direct electrical programming requiring no mechanical parts greatly reduces the weight of an overall system as well as the power consumption, making it hugely popular in portable electronics spanning from thumb drives and memory cards to solid-state drives in smart phones and laptops[1, 2] Emerging areas, such as wearable, body-attachable, or disposable electronics, will greatly benefit from such characteristics of flash memories as well as from their well-established circuit infrastructure, provided that they can be realized on various non-rigid substrates and, at the same time, can exhibit a memory performance that is sufficient for real-world applications[3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12]. The solution processing used for most polymeric dielectric layers makes it difficult to use them in flash memories due to the complexity involved in the formation a
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