Conjugated donor-acceptor-acceptor (D-A-A) molecule for organic nonvolatile resistor memory

A new donor-acceptor-acceptor (D-A-A) type of conjugated molecule, N-(4-(N',N'-diphenyl)phenylamine)-4-(4'-(2,2-dicyanovinyl)phenyl) naphthalene-1,8-dicarboxylic monoimide (TPA-NI-DCN), consisting of triphenylamine (TPA) donors and naphthalimide (NI)/dicyanovinylene (DCN) acceptors was synthesized and characterized. In conjunction with previously reported D-A based materials, the additional DCN moiety attached as end group in the D-A-A configuration can result in a stable charge transfer (CT) and charge-separated state to maintain the ON state current. The vacuum-deposited TPA-NI-DCN device fabricated as an active memory layer was demonstrated to exhibit write-once-read-many (WORM) switching characteristics of organic nonvolatile memory due to the strong polarity of the TPA-NI-DCN moiety.