(38h) Tailored Assembly of Gold Nanoparticles for Nonvolatile Memory Applications

Surface patterning at the nanometer scale has enormous applications in electronic, photonic and biological arenas. Being able to place nanoparticles (NPs) at the desired position is of highest interest for the possible integration of these building blocks into devices. In this work, we demonstrate the surface functionalization capability of patterned gold nanoparticle surface with citrate stabilized AuNPs using 4-ATP as surface modifier. Subsequently, charge storage capability for such immobilized AuNPs structures has been studied for nonvolatile memory applications. The resulting structures were characterized by atomic force and scanning electron microscopies. In addition, the electrical characterization of gold nanoparticles as a charge trapping layer in nonvolatile memory is also investigated by means of a metal-insulator-semiconductor (MIS) device. The resulting patterned gold nanoparticle assemblies show better charge storage capacity over un-patterned gold counterparts with comparable particle densities. Moreover, we demonstrate the ability to tune the memory window by controlling the density of immobilized AuNPs. Our work acts as a proof-of-concept, demonstrating the vast potential of these nanoscaled arrays of nanoparticles. This approach, by virtue of its simplicity in design and processing, can realize low cost integrated memory devices.