Optical Monitoring of the Resistive States of a Polyaniline-Based Memristive Device

Organic memristive devices are of great interest nowadays due to their low costs, flexibility, and prospects of use in artificial neuromorphic systems. Polyaniline (PANI) is a conductive and electrochemically active polymer and a promising material for redox-gated memristive devices. In this work, the electrochromic properties of PANI are utilized for spatially resolved mapping of electrochemical reactions in the active zone of a model PANI-based device. The observed nonuniform propagation of the reaction front defines the difference in the kinetics of the device while switching from the low- to high-resistance state and vice versa. This study both reveals the mechanism of resistive switching in redox-gated memristive elements and offers a novel nondestructive method for monitoring the resistive state of PANI-based memristive devices.