Effect of the oxidation of aluminum bottom electrode in a functionalized-carbon nanotube based organic rewritable memory device

In this work, a bistable switching between ON and OFF states in current-voltage (I-V) measurements in the Al/AlOx/functionalized-multiwalled carbon nanotubes (f-MWCNTs) embedded in a PEDOT:PSS layer/Al devices is shown. It is found that oxidizing the surface aluminum bottom electrode using UV ozone treatment enhances the performance and stability in room conditions of these memory devices. A well-defined threshold voltage is obtained, which allows the implementation of many write-read-erase-read cycles after the UV ozone treatment for 1 min. The improvement of the rewritable memory characteristics due to the UV ozone treatment is related with the increase of the thickness (and stabilization) of an aluminum oxide (AlOx) layer, with the change in the hydrophilicity of the aluminum oxide surface as well as the creation of traps in the aluminum oxide layer.