Horizons Community Board Collection – Progress and development in advanced memory technologies and electronics

Ye Zhou

Materials Horizons Community Board member Ye Zhou is an IAS Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, Shenzhen University. He received his BS (2008) from Nanjing University and PhD (2013) from City University of Hong Kong. His research interests include flexible and printed electronics, organic/inorganic semiconductors, surface and interface physics, and nanoscale devices for technological applications, such as logic circuits, data storage, and sensors.

Pengzhan Sun

Nanoscale Horizons Community Board member Pengzhan Sun is a research associate working at the Department of Physics and Astronomy/National Graphene Institute, University of Manchester. He received both his BS (2012) and PhD (2016) from Tsinghua University, China. His research interests include transport of molecules, atoms and ions in subnanometer confinement, and rational design and construction of nanomaterial building blocks into functional structures/devices and their fit-for-purpose applications.

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Materials Horizons and Nanoscale Horizons set up their Community Boards several years ago, aiming to support early career researchers so that they can share their experiences and ideas on scientific publishing. As future leaders in their respective fields, the Community Boards also provide a channel for members to build relationships across their research community and develop their own editorial skills.

This collection continues a series of post-publication online article collections, led by our Community Board members across both Materials Horizons and Nanoscale Horizons.

Working together and sharing their unique areas of expertise, our Community Board members have recommended several key topics where significant, rapid progress has been made in the last 2 years. They have selected top articles published in the Horizons journals to showcase the most important advances in each topic area.

Advanced memory technologies and electronics

Ye Zhou and Pengzhan Sun present this Horizons Community Board collection on progress and development in advanced memory technologies and electronics.

Read the collection here.

Advanced memory technologies and electronics are impacting the information era. Many of the emerging memories and electronic devices, especially those constructed by appealing functional materials or methodologies, may find a key role in building novel, high speed and low power consumption computing and data storage systems. In this themed collection, we have compiled noteworthy research/review articles published recently in the areas involving charge trapping memories, resistive memories, neuromorphic devices, and many other intriguing electronic devices and paradigms with new possibilities.

In the review by Kim (DOI: 10.1039/C9NH00076C), recent advances in nanotrapping memory have been discussed. Such technology endows a promising platform for both traditional and bio-inspired hardware architectures. In particular, organic memories with advanced features, high-density storage, and practical read/write speeds are promising for next generation memory technology. In this context, organic semiconductors have been carefully studied by real-time monitoring of trap dynamics, structural templating, electrochemical processes and electromechanical responses (Iqbal et al., DOI: 10.1039/D0MH00706D; Kim et al., DOI: 10.1039/C9MH00355J; Kawan et al., DOI: 10.1039/D0MH00548G; Sheliakina et al., DOI: 10.1039/C7MH00831G; Matta et al., DOI: 10.1039/C7MH00489C). Through exploring new methodologies, Lee et al. (DOI: 10.1039/C9MH00519F) have designed ionic nanocluster-evolved polymers for organic nonvolatile memory transistors. James et al. (DOI: 10.1039/C7NH00109F) have found that a redox-active device based on molecular junctions can be applied in non-volatile memory devices, and Chen et al. (DOI: 10.1039/C8NH00366A) have also reported nonvolatile memory associated with the redox behavior of polyoxometalates.

Optoelectronic and multibit memories would add glory to memory-based devices. Working in this area, Zhai et al. (DOI: 10.1039/C8MH00110C) reviewed recent advances in optoelectronic memories, covering the elegant selection of materials and design of novel device structures. The feasibility of light sensors and logic gates and the possibility of creating new optoelectronic states has been demonstrated using organic optoelectronic devices (Kolodziejczyk et al., DOI: 10.1039/C7MH00818J; Bunzmann et al., DOI: 10.1039/C9MH01475F). Tong et al. (DOI: 10.1039/C8NH00182K) have presented a reversible writing and erasing memory effect in an individual CdS nanobelt-based photodetector. New attempts have been made to design optoelectronic memories and electronics using van der Waals (vdW) heterostructures comprising a broad range of 2D materials (Chen et al., DOI: 10.1039/C9MH01923E; Li et al., DOI: 10.1039/C8MH00809D; Sokolov et al., DOI: 10.1039/C9MH01988J; Rodriguez et al., DOI: 10.1039/C9MH01950B; Kim et al., DOI: 10.1039/C9NH00631A). Zhao et al. (DOI: 10.1039/C9MH02033K) have reviewed the applications of 2D materials in memristors and their physical switching mechanisms.

Biomimetically, artificial synapses and neurons are basic building blocks for intelligent neuromorphic systems. In this context, Li et al. (DOI: 10.1039/C9MH01206K) have developed a two-terminal memristive synapse based on silver conductive filaments that can realize short-term and long-term plasticity. Zhou et al. (DOI: 10.1039/C9MH01684H) also designed carbon conductive filament memristor devices aimed at artificial synapse applications. Wang et al. (DOI: 10.1039/C9NH00341J) have presented a stable waterproof artificial synapse using a transparent electronic device that is suitable for wearable applications.

To summarize, these reports manifest the possible revolutions that novel memory and electronic systems can bring to next-generation electronics, which would be important for the construction of new intelligent systems. The rapid advancements in this area might even inspire one to dream of a paradigm shift towards a rising attempt, that is, using artificial nanofluidic functionalities to build ionic memory devices, whereby a vast class of ions bearing manifold unique features (e.g. charge, size and polarizability) can be utilized instead of electrons. Indeed, with the development of low-dimensional materials, many unexpected ion transport phenomena have been unveiled under strong confinement (for example, Sun et al., DOI: 10.1039/C9MH00549H), which might trigger efforts in such areas. More generally, we hope this themed collection will provide valuable information and inspiration to readers, not limited to the specific fields mentioned above, but extending to other seemingly irrelevant fields, which might also shed light on future developments in memory technologies and electronics by providing new ideas and implications.

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