High reliable and stable organic field-effect transistor nonvolatile memory with a poly(4-vinyl phenol) charge trapping layer based on a pn-heterojunction active layer

In this letter, we demonstrate a high reliable and stable organic field-effect transistor (OFET) based nonvolatile memory (NVM) with a polymer poly(4-vinyl phenol) (PVP) as the charge trapping layer. In the unipolar OFETs, the inreversible shifts of the turn-on voltage (Von) and severe degradation of the memory window (ΔVon) at programming (P) and erasing (E) voltages, respectively, block their application in NVMs. The obstacle is overcome by using a pn-heterojunction as the active layer in the OFET memory, which supplied a holes and electrons accumulating channel at the supplied P and E voltages, respectively. Both holes and electrons transferring from the channels to PVP layer and overwriting the trapped charges with an opposite polarity result in the reliable bidirectional shifts of Von at P and E voltages, respectively. The heterojunction OFET exhibits excellent nonvolatile memory characteristics, with a large ΔVon of 8.5 V, desired reading (R) voltage at 0 V, reliable P/R/E/R dynamic endurance over 100 cycles and a long retention time over 10 years.