Memristive dEvices based on conductive Metal Organic Frameworks

Electrolyte-gated redox transistors are an emerging type of device that has been gaining traction in neuromorphic computing research.

Mostly based on organic polymeric mixed conductors, thin-film redox transistors exploit the soft nature of polymers to swell and accommodate gating electrolyte (ions) that modulates electrical current in the transistor channel.

Although key to redox transistor operation, ion uptake is associated with extensive swelling, causing structural changes in the polymeric thin film that are detrimental to thin-film electrical properties limiting device lifetime and reproducibility. Conductive metal-organic frameworks (CMOFs) have been gaining more and more interest as smart functional materials.

CMOFs are highly crystalline porous materials, comprising metal-organic ligand pairs that determine their structural, electrical, as well as other functional properties. These find application in electrocatalysis, battery and supercapacitor technologies.

CMOFs intrinsic porosity offers well-defined ionic pathways that should allow ion uptake without structurally affecting the hole/electron-conducting properties of the thin film.

Moreover, CMOFs have larger charge storage capacity than their polymer counterparts, promising a higher number of memory states per device which will result in an exponential increase of computational power.

MEMOF aims at building Memristive dEvices based on conductive Metal Organic Frameworks that can surclass state-of-the-art polymer-based redox transistors in terms of device stability and performance.

The major challenge of the project lies in synthesizing low-defect CMOF thin films through directed epitaxial growth on functionalized surfaces.

Thanks to my expertise in the characterization of mixed conductors and transistor fabrication, and the training in MOF chemistry and crystal engineering, provided by Prof. Martí-Rujas, I aim to obtain robust redox transistors for neuromorphic computing.