Printed Memristors Using Hydrothermally Grown Zinc Oxide Nanowires

In recent years, memristors have gained considerable attention for energy efficient in-memory computing, needed for processing large sensing datasets. Herein, we present the vertically aligned zinc oxide (ZnO) nanowires (NWs)-based memristors fabricated by combining the hydrothermal (HT) growth method and printed technology. HT reaction parameters are optimized to synthesize NWs that are short enough to allow resistive switching. The optimized NW layer is then coated with an ultra-thin polymethyl methacrylate layer, followed by printing of the top metal electrodes via direct ink writing technique. The NW-based memristors showed bipolar behavior with low SET and RESET voltages (about 0.5 V and −1.4 V, respectively), linear low resistance state characteristics and the high repeatable ON/OFF ratio of 4 orders of magnitude. These results show the potential of the presented memristors for neural-like computing to enable fast and efficient data processing in Large-Area Electronics applications, such as electronic skin and Internet of Things.