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Memristors
Memory Resistors
Aleksey Gladkov
What are They?
Memristor is a portmanteau of the words
memory and resistor.
Memristors themselves are passive, two
terminal components recently created
by HP labs with the ability to
“remember” the charge carried across
themselves even when there is not
current or voltage present.
The Father of Memsistors
Memsistor theory
was originally
proposed by Dr.
Leon Chua in a
1971 paper. He is
currently employed
at UC Berkley.
More Recently
In 2008, a team at
Hewlett Packard
Laboratories
developed a working
model of a memristor
using a thin film of
titanium dioxide. In
October 2011 the
same team said that
the technology should
be commercially
available within 18
months.
Some Math
The memristor is a
two-terminal
variable resistor,
with resistance
dependent upon the
magnetic flux
linkage (the integral
of the
voltage)amount of
charge q that has
passed between the
terminals.
A Bit of Substitution
Some substitution gives us the memristance
as a function of charge over time, and,
more importantly, as a function of voltage
and current.
Structure
The device developed
by HP Labs
consists of a 50nm
thin film of titanium
dioxide with 5nm
electrodes on
either side. There
are two layers to
the film, one of
which is oxygen
depleted.
Function
The oxygen depleted spots act as charge carriers, and
drift when an electric filed is applied, changing the
combined resistance of the two layers. The carriers
can be moved back by introducing a reversed flow of
charge, which causes the device to return to it's
initial state. The memristor will maintain its
configuration even if the current is cut off, making it a
more robust memory solution compared to the
devices currently on the market.
What it all Means
As shown in the
image to the left,
memristors fill a
previous gap in our
knowledge of
electronics, by
providing a passive
component which
relates flux to
charge.
Some Applications
In April of 2010 HP Labs announced that they had
created a memristor with a switching speed of about
1ns (~1GHz) and a footprint of 3x3 nm. Since then,
they have created some sample devices, capable of
containing 12 GB of data per square cm, and are
looking to increase that to 20 GB by 2013.
True Potential
The true potential of memristors lies in the fact that
they are capable of having dozens, if not
hundreds of different states, instead of just the
two that we have come to associate with
computing.
Memristors are also capable of performing logic
functions, which means that the current
compartmentalized structure of computing could
very well be on its way out, as we create devices
capable of both storing and processing data in
the same space.
Questions?
References
MIT Technology Review
<http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/25018/page2/>.
Wikipedia: Memristor <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor>.
Computer World
<http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9216745/HP_advanc
es_next_gen_memristor_memory_technology?taxonomyId=19
&pageNumber=1>
HP Labs<http://www.hpl.hp.com/news/2010/aprjun/memristor.html>
All Images courtesy of google images