Thermochemical hole burning on a series of N-substituted morpholinium 7,7,8,8-tetracyanoquinodimethane charge-transfer complexes for data storage.

We demonstrate here the thermochemical hole burning (THB) effect on a series of N-substituted morpholinium 7,7,8,8-tetracyanoquinodimethane charge-transfer (C-T) complexes for ultra-high-density data storage. A correlation between the decomposition temperature of the charge-transfer complex and the threshold voltage of hole burning was observed: the higher the decomposition temperature, the larger the writing threshold value, suggesting the possibility of molecular design for optimizing the hole burning performance. The macroscopic decomposition properties of these charge-transfer complexes were studied by thermal gravimetry combined with mass spectrometry. Theoretical estimation of the temperature rise induced by scanning tunneling microscopy current heating was also conducted, which indicated that the maximum temperature certainly exceeds the decomposition temperatures of these C-T complexes. These observations are consistent with the thermochemical hole burning mechanism.