A low switching voltage organic-on-inorganic heterojunction memory element utilizing a conductive polymer fuse on a doped silicon substrate

We present a simple, nonvolatile, write-once-read-many-times ~WORM! memory device utilizing an organic-on-inorganic heterojunction ~OI–HJ! diode with a conductive polymer fuse consisting of polyethylene dioxythiophene:polysterene sulfonic acid ~PEDOT:PSS! forming one side of the rectifying junction. Current transients are used to change the fuse from a conducting to a nonconducting state to record a logical ‘‘1’’ or ‘‘0’’, while the nonlinearity of the OI–HJ allows for passive matrix memory addressing. The device switches at 2 and 4 V for 50 nm thick PEDOT:PSS films on p-type Si and n-type Si, respectively. This is significantly lower than the switching voltage used in PEDOT:PSS/p-i-n Si memory elements @J. Appl Phys. 94, 7811 ~2003!#. The switching results in a permanent reduction of forward-bias current by approximately five orders of magnitude. These results suggest that the OI–HJ structure has potential for use in low-cost passive matrix WORM memories for archival storage applications. © 2004 American Institute of Physics. @DOI: 10.1063/1.1763632#