Electronic effect of terminal acceptor groups on different organic donor–acceptor small-molecule based memory devices

Abstract

In this work, three new organic donor–acceptor small-molecules, in which bicarbazole served as the electron donor, and benzothiazole, nitryl or 1,1′-dicyanovinyl were used as the electron acceptor, were designed and synthesized in order to fabricate sandwiched memory devices. Acceptors with a variable electron-delocalized extent and electron-withdrawing strength were attached to the molecular backbone in order to investigate the effect on the devices switching behavior. The bi-n-butylcarbazole benzothiazole (BCZ-BT) based memory device exhibited volatile static random access memory (SRAM) switching behaviour, while the devices based on bi-n-butylcarbazole nitryl (BCZ-NO₂) was found to exhibit stable nonvolatile write-once-read-many-times (WORM) data storage characteristics and the bi-n-butylcarbazole dicyanovinyl (BCZ-CN) device acted as rewritable flash memory with a higher ON/OFF current ratio of about 10⁴. Therefore, tunable data storage devices synthesized by adjusting the terminal acceptor groups offer feasible guidance for the rational design of organic molecules to achieve superior memory performance.