TITLE: Fully Inkjet-Printed RRAM Memory Circuits for Solution-Processed Electronics

SPEAKER: Jeremy Smith, PhD., U.C. Berkeley

Tuesday, April 18, 2017  11:30 AM – 1:00  pm

Texas Instruments (TI) Auditorium E-1
2900 Semiconductor Drive
Santa Clara, CA map

Cost $6, discount for IEEE Members, Students & Unemployed. Please register here.

ABSTRACT:

Inkjet printing provides a convenient, digital, additive manufacturing process to demonstrate the compatibility of solution-processed electronic materials suitable for flexible electronics, roll-to-roll processing, and large-area electronics.

This study also highlights some of the challenges of controlling film formation, nanoparticle ink development, and materials interactions in a realistic situation. I will discuss the use of sol-gel oxides and metal nanoparticle inks in a 3D printer for fabricating novel transistors and RRAM memory devices. In particular, using fully printed thin-film transistors (TFT),

I have studied several interface effects that are critical for device operation both in terms of the print morphology and also electrical injection and back surface effects. The dielectric, in this case ZrO₂, was found to be very sensitive to the sol-gel drying conditions, which are not always well controlled during printing.

In the case of memory devices, resistive switching was employed in the Ag/ZrO₂/Au system to fabricate printable RRAM memory arrays. These arrays can be operated as content addressable memory, which has many applications in pattern matching, image recognition, and synaptic-like memory behavior. However, controlling the uniformity of switching, especially in printed devices, is an important challenge. In conclusion, we show that knowledge of component materials, processing effects, and interactions of materials within a device are all critical to advancing the field of printed electronics.

Image by A13ean Use licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY:

Jeremy Smith received his MSci degree in Materials Science from the University of Cambridge in 2007 and his PhD in the Physics Department at Imperial College London. His research, under the supervision of Prof. Thomas D. Anthopoulos, was focused on the development of high mobility organic field-effect transistors with a particular interest in the links between thin-film morphology and charge transport.

He then worked in Prof. Tobin Marks’s group at Northwestern University on solution processed amorphous oxide semiconductors for printable, thin-film electronics, before conducting research with Prof. Vivek Subramanian at UC Berkeley also in the area of printed electronics.

• 11:30 am – Registration & light lunch (pizza & drinks)
• Noon – Presentation & Questions/Answers
• 1:00 pm – Adjourn