Programmable digital polymer memories

Electrically bistable switching polymeric materials have recently attracted significant attention because they have important advantages over inorganic silicon- and metal-oxide-based materials for memory device applications in that their dimensions can easily be miniaturized and their properties can easily be tailored through chemical synthesis. Moreover, they can be processed at low cost and have high flexibility, high mechanical strength, and good scalability. Thus, there have been many attempts to develop polymer memory materials that can meet the requirements of high performance electrical memory devices, such as a high ON/OFF ratio, long endurance and retention characteristics, and a fast switching speed. This review covers polymeric memory materials, device characteristics, and data storage mechanisms.

► Electrical polymer memories have shown to be promising alternative to the current silicon and metal-oxide memories. ► Resistive polymer memories were found to operate mainly via local charge-traps and filament formation by electric fields. ► Polymer memories opened up the possibility of the mass production of high performance memory devices at low cost. ► Polymer memories are challenged to fabricate 3-dimensional multilayered devices with pixels and transistors/diodes.