Nonvolatile organic field-effect transistor memory element with a polymeric gate electret

Abstract

Organic field-effect transistors with a polymeric electret as gate insulator and fullerenes as a molecular semiconductor were fabricated. We observed an amplification of the drain–source current $I_{\mathrm{ds}}$ on the order of ${10}^4$ upon applying a gate voltage $V_g$ . Reversing the gate voltage $V_g$ features large metastable hysteresis in the transfer characteristics $I_{\mathrm{ds}}\left(V_g\right)$ with a long retention time. The observation of a switchable channel current $I_{\mathrm{ds}}$ is proposed to originate from charge storage in the organic electret. As such, this device is a demonstration of an organic nonvolatile memory element switchable with the gate voltage.