Poly(phenylene sulfide) (PPS) is a well-known organic insulator. However, the PPS thin film, deposited by thermal evaporation in vacuum, showed electrical bistable characteristics. The structure of the PPS thin-film device was glass/ITO/PPS (300 nm)/Au. The thin film can be converted to a high conductance state by applying a pulse of 80 V (5 s), and brought back to a low conductance state by applying a pulse of 100 V (5 s). This kind of thin film is potential for active layer of a memory device. The critical voltage of the device is about 40 V, while the read-out voltage is 5 V. We tentatively ascribe the bistable phe-nomenon to the charge transfer from S to C atoms in the PPS molecule chains.
