The Fourth Fundamental Circuit Element

BYJYOTI PAL

Currently known fundamental passive elements Resistors,

Capacitors & Inductors. Does a 4th passive element exist..? Leon O. Chua formulated Memristor theory in his paper Memristor-The Missing Circuit Element in 1971. Symbol-

It is a property of an electronic component.

When I=0, charge flow stops & component

will REMEMBER the LAST RESISTANCE it had.

When the flow of charge regains, the Resistance Of The Circuit Will Be The Value When It Was Last Active.

If I(t)=0, then V(t)=0 and M(t) is a constant. This is the essence of the memory effect.

Two terminal device in which magnetic flux m between its terminals is a function of amount of electric charge q passed through the device.

M(q) = dm/dq
M(q) = [dm/dt] / [dq/dt] = V/I V(t) = M(q(t))I(t) The memristor is static if no current is applied.

Resistor is analogous to a pipe that carries water. Water(charge q), input pressure(voltage v), rate of flow of water(current i). In case of resistor, flow of water is faster if pipe is shorter and/or has a larger diameter.

Titanium dioxide memristor Polymeric memristor Spin memristive systems

Microscopic view of memristor row

On April 30, 2010, a team at HP Labs led by the scientist R. Stanley Williams announced the discovery of a switching memristor. It achieves a resistance dependent on the history of current using a chemical mechanism. The HP device is composed of a thin (5nm) Titanium dioxide film between two Pt electrodes.
TYPES OF LAYERS

DEPLETED LAYER OF OXYGEN ATOM

NON DEPLETED LAYER

For linear ionic drift in an uniform field with average ion mobility ,

The 2nd term in the parentheses which contribute more to memristance becomes larger when D is in the nanometer range.

By Application Of External Bias, We Can Move

The Boundary To Adjust The Device Resistance From Ron To Roff.

For a memristor to switch from Ron to Roff in time Ton to Toff, the charge must change by Q = QonQoff.

Memristors carries memory of its past.

Lower voltage. Less power.

Less time to turn on unlike DRAM and FLASH.

Memory maintenance not required.

Denser cells store more data than flash memory.

The memristor functions at about one-tenth the speed of todays DRAM memory cells. The graphs in Williams report shows switching operation at only 1Hz.

Although small dimension of device seems to imply fast operation, the charge carriers move very slowly.

Don't forget the data when A computer is shut off by combining it with Cross-bar Latches. Replaced DRAM. The Hewlett-Packard team has successfully created working circuits based on memristors that are as small as 15 nanometers. The ability to store and retrieve a vast array of intermediate values . An analog computer in which you don't use 1s and 0s only.

The hysteretic characteristics detected in many thin film devices can now be understood as memristive behaviour. This behaviour is more relevant as active region in devices shrink to nanometer thickness. A lot of transistors and capacitors do the job of a single memristor. No combination of R,L,C circuit could duplicate the memristance. So the memristor qualifies as a fundamental circuit element.

Wikipedia.org Slideworld.com ieeexplore.ieee.org CrazyEngineers.com Engadget.com FaaDooEngineers.com

THANK YOU !