Tuning the Microstructure of Donor/Acceptor Blend Films To Achieve High-Performance Ternary Data-Storage Devices

Most of the high-performance electronic devices are based on donor–acceptor (D–A) structured molecules, which usually require complex reaction conditions and long-time synthesis periodicity, limiting the large-scale potential application in future. Encouraged by our previous research about blending the pristine electron-donor and electron-acceptor together as the active layer in memory devices, the tailor-made D/A blends with large π-conjugated planarity were designed for effective molecular interactions in thin films. The electron density of states distribution of individual D/A units indicated the non-negligible interactive coupling between the donor and acceptor, which were further confirmed by the UV–vis spectroscopy and cyclic voltammetry of the D/A blended films. Through mixing the blends with different D/A proportion, various microstructures were achieved to influence the corresponding memory behaviors, where the device with D/A proportion of 2/1 exhibited the typical ternary memory performance, while other devices showed the binary memory properties. The work presented here provides a novel mind in molecular designing and active-layer making to achieve excellent high-density memory devices in future.