Electron-beam writing of a relaxor ferroelectric polymer for multiplexing information storage and encryption.

To meet the strong demand for high-level encryption security, several efforts have been focused on developing new encryption techniques with high density and data security. Herein we employed a template-free electron beam lithography (EBL) technique to write various nanopatterns on poly(vinylidene fluoride-trifluoroethylene-chlorofluoroethylene) (P(VDF-TrFE-CTFE)) films and applied it to electron-beam/electric multiplexing memory. Furthermore, electron beams can arbitrarily tailor down the domain structure evolutions and dipole directions, as proved by a combination of AFM-IR and PFM. Finally, our devices could function concurrently as an electron-beam write-only-memory (EB-WOM) and FeRAM, where the information could be encoded with the metastable phase evolutions from the ferroelectric phase to the paraelectric phase and variable bi-level ferroelectric signals. Our systematic study provides an inspiring idea for the design of information encryption devices with high-security requirements in flexible electronic fields.