Pentacene thin-film on organic/inorganic nanohybrid dielectrics for ZnO charge injection memory transistor

We report on the fabrication of ZnO-channel charge injection memory thin-film transistors (TFTs). Our non-volatile memory TFT has a thin pentacene on top of a dielectric sandwich which has 3 nm-thin inserted potential well as a hole trap layer. The thin pentacene in contact with Au top electrode supports effective hole injection from pentacene into the inserted well under +8 V programming gate pulse while those injected holes are effectively ejected out under −8 V pulse, so that ZnO channel below the dielectric may have two different current states: write and erase. Our device operates at less than 2 V and shows a retention time of about 1000 s after programmed at +8 V, along with an effective program/erase ratio of 5–20.