Research on the Characteristics and the Mechanism of an Organic Single-Layer Resistance Change Device

This work aim to investigate the resistance change characteristic and the formation mechanism of a single-layer ITO/PMMA/Al device under an applied electric field. By optimizing the thickness and the annealing temperature of PMMA, the device presents two different resistance states. The current–voltage curve of the device was obtained by simulation, and the results were in accordance with the Poole-Frenkel model. These results combined with surface morphology research results show that the resistance change characteristic of the device is related to doping effects caused by the evaporated Al spread into PMMA. Based on the memristor nonlinear charge-drift model with actual measurement parameters of the organic device, the simulation results of the voltage–current curve agreed with the actual measured results of the device. Therefore, we believe that the device resistance mechanism can be attributed to the interdiffusion of carriers under an applied electric field, between the high-doped region (low resistance) and the low-doped region (high resistance) caused by evaporated Al, resulting in transition to a different resistance state of the organic device.