Nonvolatile Transistor Memory with Self-Assembled Semiconducting Polymer Nanodomain Floating Gates

Organic field effect transistor based nonvolatile memory (OFET-NVM) with semiconducting nanofloating gates offers additional benefits over OFET-NVMs with conventional metallic floating gates due to the facile controllability of charge storage based on the energetic structure of the floating gate. In particular, an all-in-one tunneling and floating-gate layer in which the semiconducting polymer nanodomains are self-assembled in the dielectric tunneling layer is promising. In this study, we utilize crystals of a p-type semiconducting polymer in which the crystalline lamellae of the polymer are spontaneously developed and embedded in the tunneling matrix as the nanofloating gate. The widths and lengths of the polymer nanodomains are approximately 20 nm and a few hundred nanometers, respectively. An OFET-NVM containing the crystalline nanofloating gates exhibits memory performance with a large memory window of 10 V, programming/erasing switching endurance for over 500 cycles, and a long retention time of 5000 s. Moreover, the device performance is improved by comixing with an n-type semiconductor; thus, the solution-processed p- and n-type double floating gates capable of storing both holes and electrons allow for the multilevel operation of our OFET-NVM. Four highly reliable levels (two bits per cell) of charge trapping and detrapping are achieved using this OFET-NVM by accurately choosing the programming/erasing voltages.