Interfacial Effects on Resistive Switching of Polymer Films Embedded with Different Nanomaterials

The resistive switching of polymer films embedded with nanoparticles (NPs) has recently attracted great attention for the promising application in next-generation memory devices. In particular, the polymer/NP interface is believed to play a key role in affecting the electronic structure and charge transport of the nanocomposites films. Herein, interfacial effects on switching performance were studied by embedding different NPs so as to engineer the polymer/NP interface. An ON/OFF current ratio of >104 was observed in our device with the switching mechanism of charge trapping and detrapping. Using quantum-chemical calculations, we demonstrate that the interaction between polymer and NP can largely affect the electronic structure at the interface, resulting in different interfacial barrier. The transmission spectrum shows that the charge transport between polymer and NP may depend on the relative energetic position of the frontier molecular orbitals with respect to the Fermi level under the effects of bias....