Novel Authentic and Ultrafast Organic Photorecorders Enhanced by AIE-Active Polymer Electrets via Interlayer Charge Recombination

Organic photonic memory, featuring a variety of glamorously light-driven characteristics, is rapidly growing into an indispensable building block for next-generation optical communication systems. However, the ambiguity of their operating mechanism associated with the limitation of photoadaptive materials as an electronics promoter results in the slow development of photonic transistor-based devices. In this study, the conjugated polymers composed of donor–acceptor motifs with typical aggregation-induced emission (AIE) behaviors are designed and successfully discover high-performance photoprogrammable memory. Moreover, the mechanism of photoboosted recording behavior, attributed to the recombination of the formed interlayer excitons right after simultaneous excitation without applying vertical and parallel electric-field at the interface in-between active semiconductor and AIE polymers, is cautiously corroborated by steady-state PL and pulse PL measurements. The AIE-polymer memory devices perform ultrafast photoresponse time of 0.1 ms, an outstanding current switch ratio up to 10⁶, and retention stability over 40 000 s without significant dissipation. Furthermore, photoresponsive AIE-polymer electrets not only modulate the memory performance through the emission wavelength but easily switch storage behavior of nonvolatile memory from flash to WORM by adjusting the torsion-angle through the motif of the donor and acceptor moieties. These findings open an avenue for designing conjugated polymer electret for ultrafast optical storage devices.