A benzothiadiazole-containing π-conjugated small molecule as promising element for nonvolatile multilevel resistive memory device

Highlights: • A benzothiadiazole-based small molecule was designed for resistive memory device. • The film nanostructure and optoelectronic properties of the molecule were studied. • The reliable multilevel resistive memory behavior was successfully achieved. A novel 2,1,3-benzothiadiazole (BT)-based donor−acceptor (D−A) type small molecule (NBTC) has been demonstrated for promising application in organic multilevel resistive memory devices. NBTC exhibits excellent nonvolatile ternary memory effects with high ON2/ON1/OFF current ratios of 10^7.5/10^3.8/1 and threshold voltages of −2.70 and −4.80V, attributing to the different electron-withdrawing abilities of acceptors that can induce stepwise D−A charge transfer and charge trapping processes. This result suggests that BT-based D−A type materials can hold great promise for achieving ultrahigh-density data-storage devices through the rational D−A modulation, which provides guidelines for designing more proof-of-concept organic memory electronics for big data storage application.