Quinoxaline-Based Donor-Acceptor conjugated polymers for nonvolatile ternary memory devices

Quinoxaline-based polymer materials have been used in various optoelectronic devices, but their utilization in polymer-based memory devices is rarely explored. Herein, a class of solution-processable, quinoxaline-based donor–acceptor conjugated polymers were synthesized and applied to fabricate memristors with the sandwich structure of indium-tin-oxide/active layer/aluminum. The quinoxaline was decorated by phenanthrene or acenaphthene to serve as the acceptor in these conjugated polymers. Incorporation of the phenanthrene or acenaphthene moiety in the quinoxaline structure was found to provide an extra charge trap site, bringing about interesting ternary switch behavior. Notably, these ternary memristors exhibit promising device performance, realizing the threshold voltages of −0.64 V and ON/OFF ratios exceeding 104. And they can still show ternary switch behavior after 103 cycles with a retention time are over 104 s. This work demonstrates the potential of quinoxaline-based materials for ternary memory applications and useful strategies for designing ternary storage materials.