Definition Memristor theory was formulated and named by Leon Chua in a 1971 paper.

Chua strongly believed that a fourth device existed to provide conceptual symmetry with the resistor, inductor, and capacitor. This symmetry follows from the description of basic passive circuit elements as defined by a relation between two of the four fundamental circuit variables. A device linking charge and flux (themselves defined as time integrals of current and voltage), which would be the memristor, was still hypothetical at the time. However, it would not be until thirty-seven years later, on April 30, 2008, that a team at HP Labs led by the scientist R. Stanley Williams would announce the discovery of a switching memristor. Based on a thin film of titanium dioxide, it has been presented as an approximately ideal device. The reason that the memristor is radically different from the other fundamental circuit elements is that, unlike them, it carries a memory of its past. When you turn off the voltage to the circuit, the memristor still remembers how much was applied before and for how long. That's an effect that can't be duplicated by any circuit combination of resistors, capacitors, and inductors, which is why the memristor qualifies as a fundamental circuit element. Need For Memristor A memristor is one of four basic electrical circuit components, joining the resistor, capacitor, and inductor. The memristor, short for memory resistor was first theorized by student Leon Chua in the early 1970s. He developed mathematical equations to represent the memristor, which Chua believed would balance the functions of the other three types of circuit elements. The known three fundamental circuit elements as resistor, capacitor and inductor relates four fundamental circuit variables as electric current, voltage, charge and magnetic flux. In that we were missing one to relate charge to magnetic flux. That is where the need for the fourth fundamental element comes in. This element has been named as memristor. Memristance (Memory + Resistance) is a property of an Electrical Component that describes the variation in Resistance of a component with the flow of charge. Any two terminal electrical component that exhibits Memristance is known as a Memristor. Memristance is becoming more relevant and necessary as we approach smaller circuits, and at some point when we scale into nano electronics, we would have to take memristance into account in our circuit models to simulate and design electronic circuits properly. An ideal memristor is a passive two-terminal electronic device that is built to express only the property of memristance (just as a resistor expresses resistance and an inductor expresses inductance). However, in practice it may be difficult to build a 'pure memristor,' since a real device may also have a small amount of some other property, such as capacitance (just as any real inductor also has resistance).A common analogy for a resistor is a pipe that carries water. The water itself is analogous to electrical charge, the pressure at the input of the pipe is similar to voltage, and the rate of flow of the water through the pipe is like electrical current. Just as with an electrical resistor, the flow of water through the pipe is faster if the pipe is shorter and/or it has a larger diameter.

What is a memristor? Memristors are basically a fourth class of electrical circuit, joining the resistor, the capacitor, and the inductor, that exhibit their unique properties primarily at the nanoscale. Theoretically, Memristors, a concatenation of memory resistors, are a type of passive circuit elements that maintain a relationship between the time integrals of current and voltage across a two terminal element. Thus, a memristors resistance varies according to a devices memristance function, allowing, via tiny read charges, access to a history of applied voltage. The material implementation of memristive effects can be determined in part by the presence of hysteresis (an accelerating rate of change as an object moves from one state to another) which, like many other non-linear anomalies in contemporary circuit theory, turns out to be less an anomaly than a fundamental property of passive circuitry. Until recently, when HP Labs under Stanley Williams developed the first stable prototype, memristance as a property of a known material was nearly nonexistant. The memristance effect at non-nanoscale distances is dwarfed by other electronic and field effects, until scales and materials that are nanometers in size are utilized. At the nanoscale, such properties have even been observed in action prior to the HP Lab prototypes. But beyond the physics of electrical engineering, they are a reconceptualizing of passive electronic circuit theory first proposed in 1971 by the nonlinear circuit theorist Leon Chua. What Leon Chua, a UC Berkeley Professor, contended in his 1971 paper Transactions on Circuit Theory, is that the fundamental relationship in passive circuitry was not between voltage and charge as assumed, but between changes-in-voltage, or flux, and charge. Chua has stated: The situation is analogous to what is called Aristotles Law of Motion, which was wrong, because he said that force must be proportional to velocity. That misled people for 2000 years until Newton came along and pointed out that Aristotle was using the wrong variables. Newton said that force is proportional to accelerationthe change in velocity. This is exactly the situation with electronic circuit theory today. All electronic textbooks have been teaching using the wrong variablesvoltage and chargeexplaining away inaccuracies as anomalies. What they should have been teaching is the relationship between changes in voltage, or flux, and charge. As memristors develop, its going to come down to, in part, who can come up with the best material implementation. Currently IBM, Hewlett Packard, HRL, Samsung and many other research labs seem to be hovering around the titanium dioxide memristor, but there are quite a few other types of memristors with vectors of inquiry

Human blood has been used to model a biomedical memristor circuit by an Indian university group. In the study, the researchers, who are also studying diodes and capacitors modeled on, and built of, liquid human tissue, were able to model nv memristive behaviour for five minutes in both stationary and flowing blood. The research group of S.P. Kosta, Y.P. Kosta, Mukta Bhatele, Y.M. Dubey, Avinash Gaur, Shakti Kosta, Jyoti Gupta, Amit Patel, and Bhavin Patel, are also studying diodes and capacitors modeled on, and built of, liquid human tissue. The full paper is published in the International Journal of Medical Engineering and Informatics [link, subscription reqd] The HP Labs and Hynix partnership is currently producing hundreds of wafers through a Hynix full-size fab., Stan Williams was quoted at the International Electronics Forum 2011 yesterday. No word on how many of HPs memristive, phase change PCM, and resistive RAM patents are still in process, especially with other competitors such as Samsung and IBM close behind. Or in front of. Although HP has done a lot of the real-world legwork on metal oxides, on stackability, and memristor logic applications, the patent background is chaotic to say the least in terms of how licensing will work out in the end. Still, even with an apparent soft retraction of Williams statement that the answer to when will the first commercial memristors will be on the market? is 2013, its exciting to see a year on HPs roadmap that already has its calendars printed up.

Researchers out of Korea recently published a paper on their success in implementing a single titanium oxide based memristor integrated with a single crystal silicon transistor. In addition to future research into improvements for the read problem of nonvolatile memory via a diode and unipolar resistor combination, they created and tested a 1 Transistor, 1 Memristor cell model on plastic substrates. When packing cells with the 1T-1M model, they were able to achieve random memory access without the prior difficulties of read-path problems encountered with electrical distortion and interference. The flexible transistor works to limit read current from these memristive sneak-paths. The test arrays were constructed of an 88 grid of transistor-memristor cells, and they were able to achieve a 2.8cm long flex to within 1.8cm of each edge, for 100 flex cycles. One of the biggest problems the wearables industry has faced is the problem of power and state. Ultra-low voltage can only take viability of new material science applications so far; but true nonvolatile memory, especially with the ability to perform even simple logic-on-chip, is really one of the threshold changers to achieve. A recent paper from AIP NASAs Center for

Nanotechnology at Ames Research Center on Copper oxide resistive switching memory for etextiles gives a pretty good overview of the state of the field in short summary: [link]

Copper Oxide Resistive Memory for Textile Applications, via [AIP].

Intel hits 20nm Flash Storage SSD Milestone

Intel and Micron announced today they have hit the 20nm Flash MLC NAND target. Last months Toshiba milestone of 24nm NAND flash now has competition. Its being reported that Intel and Micron are sending out samples of 20nm NAND flash, at 2 bits per cell, in 8GB die area sizes of 118mm to selected customers: The product should enter mass production in the second half of 2011. [......] The new process results in an 8 gigabyte product and reduces board space by about 30% to 40%, allowing tablet and smartphone makers to use the extra space for improvements such as a bigger battery, larger screen or adding another chip to handle new featuresimportant factors for companies like Apple Inc., which try to include as many improvements as possible in a small form factor. [wsj] Further details have Intel and Micron hitting a 16 GB FF for the second half of this year, allowing for hitting the magic 128GB SSD in the size of a nickel. Well see how long it will take IMFT to get the production cycles up and running. Also, a 16nm nand flash process may be coming in towards the end of year [source]. Over at Anandtech, its being noted that the first 20nm NAND may be fabricated in Lehi, Utah, and that Intel-Micron might possibly transition its other fabrication production facilities in Manassas, Virginia, and Singapore to 20nm later.