Three-levels conductance switching in an organic memory cell

Thin Solid Films

Volumn 516, Issue 21, 2008, Pages 7680-7684

  Caironi, M ^a   Natali, D ^a   Canesi, E ^a   Bianco, A ^a   Bertarelli, C ^a   Zerbi, G ^a   Sampietro, M ^a  

^a POLITECNICO DI MILANO   (Italy)

Author keywords

Conductance switching; Electronic devices; Multilevel memory; Organic memory

Indexed keywords

PHENOLS; PROBABILITY DENSITY FUNCTION;

BITHIOPHENE; CONDUCTANCE SWITCHING; CURRENT-VOLTAGE; DENSITY FUNCTIONAL THEORY CALCULATIONS; DISCRETE STATES; ELECTRONIC DEVICES; EXPERIMENTAL MEASUREMENTS; MEMORY EFFECTS; MULTILEVEL MEMORY; ORGANIC MEMORIES; ORGANIC MEMORY; PROGRAMMING TIME; RETENTION TIME; SOLID STATE MEMORIES;

DENSITY FUNCTIONAL THEORY;

EID: 49449111189     PISSN: 00406090     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/j.tsf.2008.03.013     Document Type: Article

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23. The device behaviour is asymmetric: starting from the neutral state (OFF), dications are directly induced (ON1), and it is not possible to directly induce monocations (ON2), whereas starting from dications (ON1), it is possible either to go to the neutral (OFF) or to the monocationic form (ON2). To explain this, we can hypothesize that the two thio-phenyl moieties of the molecule interact with each other only in the dicationic form, which is the most planar, whereas in the neutral and in the monocationic form the relatively high degree of distortion does not lead to an effective interaction of the moieties. When the neutral molecule is oxidized to monocation, the two fragments, one neutral and one oxidized, are still non-interacting, therefore at the same applied potential it is possible to oxidize also the still neutral fragment. As a consequence the neutral molecule is directly oxidized from neutral to the dicationic form (OFF to ON1 transition). On the contrary, when the dication is reduced to monocation (ON1 to ON2 transition), the molecule goes from a situation of interacting fragments to a situation of non-interacting fragments. As a consequence, the potential which is needed to further reduce the monocation to the neutral form (ON2 to OFF transition), is different and higher than the potential which was needed to reduce the dication to the monocationic form (ON1 to ON2 transition).
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25. The methoxyl terminated and the hydroxyl terminated molecules, besides showing a different behaviour when used as active materials in memory cells, have also a different electrochemical behaviour, as emerging by preliminary cyclic voltammetry investigations. More specifically the latter molecule features an additional current peak in the voltammogram. More investigations are needed in order to relate the voltammetric peaks and the memory states of the device.