Lead-free, air-stable hybrid organic–inorganic perovskite resistive switching memory with ultrafast switching and multilevel data storage

Organolead halide perovskites exhibit excellent optoelectronic and photovoltaic properties such as a wide range of light absorption and tunable band gaps. However, the presence of toxic elements and chemical instability under an ambient atmosphere hindered lead halide perovskites from real device applications because of environmental issues and stability. Here, we demonstrate a resistive switching memory device based on a lead-free bismuth halide perovskite (CH3NH3)3Bi2I9 (MABI). The active layer of the device can be easily prepared by solvent engineering. The nonvolatile memory based on MABI layers has reliable retention properties (∼104 s), endurance (300 cycles), and switching speed (100 ns), as well as environmental stability. Moreover, the control of the compliance current leads to multilevel data storage with four resistance states, which can be applied to high-density memory devices. These results suggest that MABI has potential applications in information storage.