Nanostructures of ZnO as elements in inorganic/organic hybrid electrically writable memory devices.

In this work, we propose a hybrid inorganic/organic memory device that is fabricated using simple techniques at a temperature compatible with large area plastic substrate materials. The devices are a combination of the organic polymers polystyrene and polyvinyl acetate and nanorods of zinc oxide (ZnO), grown via a hydrothermal process which uses nanoparticles of ZnO as growth precursors. Current-voltage (I-V) and capacitance-voltage (C-V) measurements of devices incorporating ZnO nanorods show significant hysteresis in the characteristics. This is in direct contrast to the all-organic devices, where the leakage current was determined to be less than 1pA, and where no hysteresis was evident is either the I-V or C-V investigations. It is postulated that the addition of ZnO nanorods to the structure increases the overall conductivity of the device and ZnO nanorods act as a charge storage medium in the polymer matrix, which leads to the charging/discharging behaviour demonstrated in the electrical measurements.