Strategy for enhancing performance of organic ferroelectric memristors

•Electric field-assisted annealing (EFTA) treatment controls and tailors the device performance of organic memristors.•2-3 orders of increase in current magnitudes, and an order of magnitude improvement in ON-OFF ratios was obtained.•EFTA memristors yielded higher retentivity times than only thermally annealed (TA) devices.•Improvement arises from the EFTA-induced microstructural modifications within the active layer.•An increase in the proportion of the semiconducting bridging channels in the Ferroelectric matrix and an increase in charge carrier mobility attributes to the device performance enhancement. Blended films of insulating polymer-ferroelectrics with a dilute proportion of polymer semiconductors in a device structure exhibit memristor features. High current magnitudes during ON and OFF states of memory operation are critical when these devices are scaled down to nano dimensions. However, current in these devices is restricted by a limited proportion of low-mobility semiconducting transport channels bridging the top and bottom electrodes within the insulating ferroelectric-polymer matrix. We introduce electric field-assisted thermal annealing treatment during the blend film formation of memristors to overcome current limitations. This strategy enables improvement in the bridging fraction and the effective charge carrier mobility of the semiconducting regions. We present these studies for PVDF-TrFE: PFO and PVDF-TrFE: P3HT model systems. [Display omitted]