Novel Photoinduced Recovery of OFET Memories Based on Ambipolar Polymer Electret for Photorecorder Application

Abstract A new design concept for novel photoresponsive flash organic field‐effect transistor (OFET) memory is demonstrated by employing the carbazoledioxazine polymer (Poly CD) as an electret. Photoactive electrets that can absorb the light effectively rather than photoactive semiconductors are proposed by the “photoinduced recovery” mechanism in the literature; however, the correlation between the chemical structure and photoresponsive electrical performances is ambiguous. In this study, it is reported for the first time that the OFET memory with trapped charges can be optically recovered by a polymer electret and the working mechanism can be explained by the structural design. The highly planar Poly CD electret exhibits photoluminescence quenching in film states, resulting in the generation of sufficient excitons to eliminate trapped charges under light excitation. Additionally, the Poly CD electret with coplanar donor–acceptor moieties is suitable for both p‐channel and n‐channel semiconductors. For p‐type memory devices, a large memory window (82 V) and stable nonvolatile retention performance with high ON/OFF ratio could be obtained. The memories also display good switching reliability for voltage‐programming and light‐erasing cycles. This study provides useful information for the development of polymer‐based photoresponsive flash OFET memories and demonstrates the practical applications of photorecorder and photosensitive smart tag.