Nonvolatile resistive memory devices based on ferrocene-terminated hyperbranched polyimide derived from different dianhydrides

A series of ferrocene-terminated hyperbranched polyimides (HBPI-Fcs) were synthesized from a tetra-amine, bis(4-(3,5-bis (4-amino-2-(trifluoromethyl) phenoxy) phenoxy) phenyl) methanon, and various dianhydrides, followed by termination with (4-amino) phenyl ferrocene. All the HBPI-Fcs possessed good organo-solubility and high thermal stability. The devices based on HBPI-Fcs exhibited bipolar and nonvolatile write-once-read-many times (WORM) memory performance with various threshold voltages and the same ON/OFF current ratio of 10 4 . Moreover, the devices possessed excellent bistability under a constant bias of −1.00 V during a test period of 10 4 s. The different charge trapping ability of the electron-accepting moiety endowed the devices with different the threshold voltages. Mechanism analysis showed that the switching behavior was dominated by the charge trapping effect and the charge transfer was well fitted with the space-current-limited-current (SCLC) and ohmic model. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part A: Polym. Chem. 2018 , 56 , 505–513