Decreasing the Energy Consumption of Memory Devices by Enhancing the Conjugation Extent of the Terminal Electron‐Donating Moieties within Molecules

Abstract

Three small organic molecules that contained a phenothiazine backbone and triphenylamine (TPA), carbazole (CZ), or anthracene (AN) as a terminal electron donor were synthesized and fabricated in ITO/organic film/Al sandwiched memory devices. The influence of the extent of conjugation in the three molecules on the performance of their corresponding devices was investigated and the results showed that all of the fabricated devices exhibited nonvolatile ternary WORM character, whilst the switch threshold voltages decreased on moving from TPA to CZ and AN, which is promising for low-power-consumption data storage. These results revealed that tailoring the extent of conjugation in the terminal electron donor in the D-A molecules could effectively optimize the device performance, in particular the switch-threshold voltage, which could be instructive for the design of low-energy-consumption memory materials.