Organic Memristor Utilizing Copper Phthalocyanine Nanowires with Infrared Response and Cation Regulating Properties

Current organic memristive devices have been suffering from unstable performance, ambiguous mechanism, and poor NIR response, thus restricting their commercial translation. Here, a near-infrared-sensitive (NIR) organic memristive device with high stability based on solution-processed copper phthalocyanine nanowires (N-CuMe2Pc NWs) is first reported. Compared with uneven thermal evaporated N-CuMe2Pc film, the N-CuMe2Pc NWs film possesses a uniform 3D mesh structure, which attribute to the localized cationic migration, robust formation/rupture of conductive filament and subsequent improvement of reproducibility, thermal stability, and retention characteristics. Furthermore, operating voltage and OFF current can be readily regulated by NIR illumination due to strong NIR absorption of the well-aligned edge-to edge interconnected N-CuMe2Pc NWs and tunable potential barrier formed between active layer and Ag electrode, which are further verified by absorption spectrum and Kelvin probe force microscope analysis, respectively. This study provides a generalized method for optimizing device performance and attaching phototunable properties of organic memristive memories. In addition, compared with pristine Cu Pc molecules with low solubility, limitation of thermal evaporation approach that is incompatible with scaling up is expected to overcome by the solution-processed N-CuMe2Pc NWs.