Adjusting the spacers between the electron-acceptor and the elector-donor is important to design organic ternary memory material but rarely reported. In this paper, two small molecules, ZIPGA and ZIPCAD with benzene ring or triphenylamine as the spacers,were designed and synthesized to fabricate memory devices. The Al/ZIPGA/indium-tin oxide (ITO) device showed ternary characteristics, whereas Al/ZIPCAD/ITO had no obvious memory characteristics. Density functional theory calculation, X-ray diffraction (XRD) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) were employed to interpret the different memory properties. ZIPGA thin film has the closer intermolecular packing and flatter surface morphology than ZIPCAD film, which was favorable to the electron migration. This work demonstrates the importance of spacers and reveals that triphenylamine may be not a good spacer in design of new memory material. Adjusting the spacers between the electron-acceptor and the elector-donor is important to design organic ternary memory material but rarely reported. In this paper, two small molecules, ZIPGA and ZIPCAD with benzene ring or triphenylamine as the spacers, were designed and synthesized to The Al / ZIPGA / indium-tin oxide (ITO) device showed ternary characteristics, but Al / ZIPCAD / ITO had no obvious memory characteristics. Density functional theory calculation, X-ray diffraction (XRD) and atomic force microscopy ( AFM) were employed to interpret the different memory properties. This work demonstrates the importance of spacers and reveals that triphenylamine may be not a good spacer in design of new memory material.