摘要 |
<p>A switch, used as an electronic-memory element, comprising a conductive organic polymer layer sandwiched between, and in contact with, two metallic conductive elements. In an initial post-fabrication state, the organic polymer layer is relatively highly conductive, the post-fabrication constituting a first stable state of the memory element that can serve to represent a binary bit "1 or 0," depending which of two possible encoding conventions is employed. A relatively high voltage pulse can be passed between the two metal conductive elements, resulting in a market decrease in the current-carrying capacity of the organic polymer layer sandwiched between the two conductive elements. This change in conductivity of the organic polymer layer is generally irreversible, and constitutes a second stable state of the memory element that may be used to encode a binary bit "0" or "1," again depending on which of two possible encoding conventions are employed. Organic-polymer-based memory elements, modified to include an additional diode-acting layer, may be fabricated in dense, two-dimensional arrays.</p> |