An array of 17 purpose-built oxygen-depleted titanium dioxide memristors built at HP Labs, imaged by an atomic force microscope. The wires are about 50 nm, or 150 atoms, wide. Electric current through the memristors shifts the oxygen vacancies, causing a gradual and persistent change in electrical resistance.
A memristor (a portmanteau of "memory resistor") is a passive two-terminal circuit element in which the resistance is a function of the time history of the current and voltage through the device. Memristor theory was formulated and named by Leon Chua in a 1971 paper.
On April 30, 2008 a team at HP Labs announced the development of a switching memristor. Based on a thin film of titanium dioxide, it has a regime of operation with an approximately linear charge-resistance relationship. These devices are being developed for application in nanoelectronic memories, computer logic, and neuromorphic computer architectures.
A memristor is a passive two-terminal electronic component for which the resistance (dV/dI) is proportional to the amount of charge that has flowed through the circuit. When current flows in one direction through the device, the resistance increases; and when current flows in the opposite direction, the resistance decreases. When the current is stopped, the component retains the last resistance that it had, and when the flow of charge starts again, the resistance of the circuit will be what it was when it was last active.
More generally, a memristor is a two-terminal component in which the resistance depends on the integral of the input applied to the terminals, rather than on the instantaneous value of the input at the terminals. Since the element "remembers" the amount of current that has passed through it in the past, it was tagged by Chua with the name "memristor." A general memristor is any of various kinds of passive two-terminal circuit elements that maintain a functional relationship between the time integrals of current and voltage. This function, called memristance, is similar to variable resistance. Specifically engineered memristors provide controllable resistance, but such devices are not commercially available. Other devices such as batteries and varistors have memristance, but it does not normally dominate their behavior. The definition of the memristor is based solely on fundamental circuit variables, similar to the resistor, capacitor, and inductor. Unlike those three elements, which are allowed in linear time-invariant or LTI system theory, memristors are nonlinear and may be described by any of a variety of time-varying functions of net charge. There is no such thing as a generic memristor. Instead, each device implements a particular function, wherein either the integral of voltage determines the integral of current, or vice versa. A linear time-invariant memristor is simply a conventional resistor.
In his 1971 paper, memristor theory was formulated and named by Leon Chua, extrapolating the conceptual symmetry between the resistor, inductor, and capacitor, and inferring that the memristor is a similarly fundamental device. Other scientists had already proposed fixed nonlinear flux-charge relationships, but Chua's theory introduced generality.
Like other two-terminal components (e.g., resistor, capacitor, inductor), real-world devices are never purely memristors ("ideal memristor"), but will also exhibit some amount of capacitance, resistance, and inductance.
Williams' solid-state memristors can be combined into devices called crossbar latches, which could replace transistors in future computers, taking up a much smaller area.
They can also be fashioned into non-volatile solid-state memory, which would allow greater data density than hard drives with access times potentially similar to DRAM, replacing both components. HP prototyped a crossbar latch memory using the devices that can fit 100 gigabits in a square centimeter, and has designed a highly scalable 3D design (consisting of up to 1000 layers or 1 petabit per cm3).[7] HP has reported that its version of the memristor is currently about one-tenth the speed of DRAM. The devices' resistance would be read with alternating current so that the stored value would not be affected.
Some patents related to memristors appear to include applications in programmable logic, signal processing, neural networks, and control systems.
Recently, a simple electronic circuit consisting of an LC network and a memristor was used to model experiments on adaptive behavior of unicellular organisms. It was shown that the electronic circuit subjected to a train of periodic pulses learns and anticipates the next pulse to come, similarly to the behavior of slime molds Physarum polycephalum subjected to periodic changes of environment. Such a learning circuit may find applications, e.g., in pattern recognition.
