Seminar Report Memristors

1. INTRODUCTION
As far as we know there are three fundamental circuit elements namely the resistors,
inductors and the capacitors. And there are four circuit parameters. They are the
current, voltage the flux and the charge. Taking these elements in pairs there can be a
total of 6 combinations. Of the 6 combinations two are defined using the time
parameter.ie charge as the time integral of the current and flux as the time integral of
the voltage. Three of the remaining combinations are defined using the three existing
circuit elements. They are the relation between the voltage and current which is
defined using the resistance, the relation between flux and voltage which is defined
using the parameter inductor and the relation between charge and current is defined
using the element capacitor. So one of the relations is left undefined. It is the relation
between the flux and the charge. There comes the possibility of fourth circuit
element which can define this relationship. This fourth circuit element is called the
memristor. This possibility of a fourth circuit element was postulated be Leon Chua in
his paper named ‘Memristor-The missing circuit element’ published in 1971. A
memristor is a passive two-terminal circuit element in which the resistance is a
function of the history of the current and voltage through the device. Memristor
theory was formulated and named by Leon Chua in a 1971 paper.

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Seminar Report Memristors

2. HISTORY OF THE MEMRISTORS

The history of memristors dates back to 1971, when Professor Leon Chua published a
controversial paper stating that a component named ‘memristor’ should be included as
the fourth fundamental circuit element together with the resistor, capacitor and
inductor. Chua claimed that memristors had properties that could not be reproduced
by any combination of the other three elements.

Fast-forwarding to 2007, the HP team was the first to realise that the hysteresis that
was detected in the I-V curves of an extensive range of materials and structures, was
in fact the outcome of memristance.They pursued this discovery to develop an
elementary circuit model that was based on the exact mathematical equations as those
calculated by Chua for the memristor.
The HP team was able to create the first hybrid memristor-transistor chip, which
could potentially be cheaper and more energy efficient than existing chips. Lead
researcher Stan Williams, a senior research fellow at HP said that so far increasing
performance has usually meant shrinking components so that more can be packed
onto a circuit. But in this case, Williams's team removed some transistors and
replaced them with a smaller number of memristors. "We're not trying to crowd more
transistors onto a chip or into a particular circuit," Williams says. ”Hybrid memristor-
transistor chips really have the promise for delivering a lot more performance.”
Williams also states that manufacturing and integration of memristors would be
efficient, as the chips and memristors are made out of the same material as normal
integrated circuits. The team also developed a field-programmable gate array (FPGA)
using memristors and transistors, where the memristors were made from the
semiconductor titanium dioxide.
The characteristic element of a memristor is that when an AC voltage is applied to the
device, the current-voltage (I-V) plot is a Lissajous figure (the curve formed by
combining two oscillations that are perpendicular to each other). In other words, the
current versus voltage plot shows a pinched loop where current and voltage are zero at
the same point. In practical terms, the memristor performs similarly to a resistor, but it
is able to alter its resistance to the amount and direction of the voltage applied.
Furthermore, even when there is no power supplied to the memristor, it can still
‘remember’ its resistance.

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Seminar Report Memristors

The function of FGPAs is mainly in chip prototype testing. It is a favourite among

engineers because the board can be designed and reprogrammed according to the
specifications of engineer. The only downside of FPGAs is the high price and large,
bulky board. If the application of the memristors into FPGAs is successful, it would
lower the costs notably and help the introduction of memristors into the market.
The memristor could also be applied to existing flash storage or dynamic random
access memory (DRAM). A memristive device can function in both digital and analog
forms, both having very diverse applications. In digital mode, it could substitute
conventional solid-state memories (Flash) with high-speed and less steeply priced
nonvolatile random access memory (NVRAM). Eventually, it would create digital
cameras with no delay between photos or computers that save power by turning off
when not needed and then turning back on instantly when needed.
With so few institutions able to manufacture, let alone design memristors, Williams
feels that it would take at least three more years for the memristor circuit to be applied
in commercial circuits. The team at HP Labs hope that future memristors will be
faster, smaller and more energy-efficient.

TFOT has previously covered the New Speed Record for Magnetic Memories about a
spin-torque switching called ballistic switching, which could allow for increased
speeds in future non-volatile magnetic memories. TFOT also covered the World’s
Tiniest Nanophotonic Switch capable of sending information inside a computer chip
by using light pulses. You can also check out our article about Graphene
Semiconductors which could replace conventional semiconductor materials such as
silicon in applications ranging from high-speed computer chips to biochemical
sensors.

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Seminar Report Memristors

WHAT ARE MEMRISTORS

In the paper in which Leon Chua introduced the memristors he introduced it as the
fourth circuit element. Like the other three circuit elements the resistor, the capacitor
and the inductor, memristor is also a two terminal device. The basic circuit equation
that explains the behavior of the memristor is the relation between the flux and the
charge. The relation between the flux and the charge is stated as follows dφ=Mdq.
In the case of the linear elements M is similar to resistor and is of n practical
importance. The memristors can vary their resistance based on a history of voltages
applied across it

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