One-Pot Preparation of Mechanically Robust, Transparent, Highly Conductive and Memristive Metal-Organic Ultrathin Film

TL;DR

This paper presents a simple one-pot method to produce ultrathin, transparent, mechanically robust, and conductive metal-organic films with memristive properties suitable for flexible electronics.

Contribution

It introduces a novel water-air interface process to create ultrathin metal-organic films with combined mechanical, optical, and electrical functionalities.

Findings

Films are down to 4 nm thick and homogeneous over mm2 areas.

The films are transparent, mechanically robust, and electrically conductive.

They exhibit memristive behavior at low frequencies.

Abstract

The future of 2D flexible electronics relies on the preparation of conducting ultrathin films of materials with mechanical robustness and flexibility in a simple but controlled manner. In this respect, metal-organic compounds present advantages over inorganic laminar crystals owing to their structural, chemical and functional diversity. While most metal-organic compounds are usually prepared in bulk, recent work has shown that some of them are processable down to low dimensional forms. Here we report the one-pot preparation, carried out at the water-air interface, of ultrathin (down to 4 nm) films of the metal-organic compound [Cu2I2(TAA)]n (TAA= thioacetamide). The films are shown to be homogenous over mm2 areas, smooth, highly transparent, mechanically robust and good electrical conductors with memristive behavior at low frequencies. This combination of properties, as well as the industrial availability of the two building blocks required for the preparation, demonstrates their wide range potential in future flexible and transparent electronics.