Resistance-Switchable Graphene Oxide-Polymer Nanocomposites for Molecular Electronics

As the thinnest material ever known in the universe, graphene has attracted a tremendous amount of attention in recent years. To switch graphene ON and OFF for memory devices, electroactive polymers, including polyaniline (PANI), polyvinylcarbazole (PVK), triphenylamine-based polyazomethine (TPAPAM), polythiophene (PTh), and others, have been covalently bonded to graphene oxide (GO) to manipulate the processability and to engineer the molecular bandgap of the atomic carbon nanosheets. GO-PANI, GO-PVK, and GO-TPAPAM demonstrate promising bi-stable resistive switching behaviors with small turn-on voltages of less than 2.0 V, low power consumptions of 6.7 nW-221.4 mu W, and large ON/OFF ratios exceeding 10(3). With advantages including miniaturized dimensions, mechanical flexibility, and the non-exotic nature of the raw carbon material, GO-polymer nanocomposites promise to have great potential for next-generation information-storage applications.