Characterization of PI:PCBM organic nonvolatile resistive memory devices under thermal stress

• We investigated the reliability issues of organic memory devices under thermal stresses.
• We verified the electrical and structural robustness upon increasing the temperature from room temperature to 470 K.
• The PI:PCBM organic memory devices exhibited stable resistive switching performance at high temperatures.

In this study, we fabricated nonvolatile organic memory devices using a mixture of polyimide (PI) and 6-phenyl-C61 butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM) (denoted as PI:PCBM) as an active memory material with Al/PI:PCBM/Al structure. Upon increasing the temperature from room temperature to 470 K, we demonstrated the good nonvolatile memory properties of our devices in terms of the distribution of ON and OFF state currents, the threshold voltage from OFF state to ON state transition, the retention, and the endurance. Our organic memory devices exhibited an excellent ON/OFF ratio (ION/IOFF > 103) through more than 200 ON/OFF switching cycles and maintained ON/OFF states for longer than 104 s without showing any serious degradation under measurement temperatures up to 470 K. We also confirmed the structural robustness under thermal stress through transmission electron microscopy cross-sectional images of the active layer after a retention test at 470 K for 104 s. This study demonstrates that the operation of PI:PCBM organic memory devices could be controlled at high temperatures and that the structure of our memory devices was maintained during thermal stress. These results may enable the use of nonvolatile organic memory devices in high temperature environments.

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