Memcapacitor and Meminductor Circuit Emulators: A Review

This research was funded by the Japanese KAKENHI through Grant Number JP18k04275 and Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture, and Sport (MECD), through Project TEC2017-89955-P and Grant Numbers: FPU16/01451 and FPU16/04043.In 1971, Prof. L. Chua theoretically introduced a new circuit element, which exhibited a different behavior from that displayed by any of the three known passive elements: the resistor, the capacitor or the inductor. This element was called memristor, since its behavior corresponded to a resistor with memory. Four decades later, the concept of mem-elements was extended to the other two circuit elements by the definition of the constitutive equations of both memcapacitors and meminductors. Since then, the non-linear and non-volatile properties of these devices have attracted the interest of many researches trying to develop a wide range of applications. However, the lack of solid-state implementations of memcapacitors and meminductors make it necessary to rely on circuit emulators for the use and investigation of these elements in practical implementations. On this basis, this review gathers the current main alternatives presented in the literature for the emulation of both memcapacitors and meminductors. Different circuit emulators have been thoroughly analyzed and compared in detail, providing a wide range of approaches that could be considered for the implementation of these devices in future designs.Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan (MEXT) Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (KAKENHI) JP18k04275Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture, and Sport (MECD) TEC2017-89955-P FPU16/01451 FPU16/0404

Experience on material implication computing with an electromechanical memristor emulator

Memristors are being considered as a promising emerging device able to introduce new paradigms in both data storage and computing. In this paper the authors introduce the concept of a quasi-ideal experimental device that emulates the fundamental behavior of a memristor based on an electro- mechanical organization. By using this emulator, results about the experimental implementation of an unconventional material implication-based data-path equivalent to the i-4004 are presented and experimentally demonstrated. The use of the proposed quasi-ideal device allows the evaluation of this new computing paradigm, based on the resistance domain, without incorporating the disturbance of process and cycle to cycle variabilities observed in real nowadays devices that cause a limit in yield and behavior.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

OTA Based Mem-capacitor Validation and Implementation Using Commercially Available IC

This paper discusses a mem-capacitor circuit which is based on two MO-OTA along with a multiplier and 4 passive elements. This circuit is a charge-controlled memcapacitor emulator which is independent of any memristor also it consists the feature of electronic tunability. Additionally, this circuit is simpler and uses less hardware because it lacks a mutator and uses fewer active-passive components. The circuit behaviour is justified through various simulations in cadence Orcad tool with 180nm CMOS TSMC parameters. Additionally, conclusions from simulations and theory are validated experimentally through commercially available IC

Teaching Memory Circuit Elements via Experiment-Based Learning

The class of memory circuit elements which comprises memristive, memcapacitive, and meminductive systems, is gaining considerable attention in a broad range of disciplines. This is due to the enormous flexibility these elements provide in solving diverse problems in analog/neuromorphic and digital/quantum computation; the possibility to use them in an integrated computing-memory paradigm, massively-parallel solution of different optimization problems, learning, neural networks, etc. The time is therefore ripe to introduce these elements to the next generation of physicists and engineers with appropriate teaching tools that can be easily implemented in undergraduate teaching laboratories. In this paper, we suggest the use of easy-to-build emulators to provide a hands-on experience for the students to learn the fundamental properties and realize several applications of these memelements. We provide explicit examples of problems that could be tackled with these emulators that range in difficulty from the demonstration of the basic properties of memristive, memcapacitive, and meminductive systems to logic/computation and cross-bar memory. The emulators can be built from off-the-shelf components, with a total cost of a few tens of dollars, thus providing a relatively inexpensive platform for the implementation of these exercises in the classroom. We anticipate that this experiment-based learning can be easily adopted and expanded by the instructors with many more case studies.Comment: IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine (in press

Nonvolatile CMOS memristor, reconfigurable array and its application in power load forecasting

© 2023 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works. This is the accepted manuscript version of a conference paper which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1109/TII.2023.3341256The high cost, low yield, and low stability of nano-materials significantly hinder the application and development of memristors. To promote the application of memristors, researchers proposed a variety of memristor emulators to simulate memristor functions and apply them in various fields. However these emulators lack nonvolatile characteristics, limiting their scope of application. This paper proposes an innovative nonvolatile memristor circuit based on complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology, expanding the horizons of memristor emulators. The proposed memristor is fabricated in a reconfigurable array architecture using the standard CMOS process, allowing the connection between memristors to be altered by configuring the on-off state of switches. Compared to nano-material memristors, the CMOS nonvolatile memristor circuit proposed in this paper offers advantages of low manufacturing cost and easy mass production, which can promote the application of memristors. The application of the reconfigurable array is further studied by constructing an Echo State Network (ESN) for short-term load forecasting in the power system.Peer reviewe

Memristor Emulator Circuit Design and Applications

This chapter introduces a design guide of memristor emulator circuits, from conceptual idea until experimental tests. Three topologies of memristor emulator circuits in their incremental and decremental versions are analysed and designed at low and high frequency. The behavioural model of each topology is derived and programmed at SIMULINK under the MATLAB environment. An offset compensation technique is also described in order to achieve the frequency-dependent pinched hysteresis loop that is on the origin and when the memristor emulator circuit is operating at high frequency. Furthermore, from these topologies, a technique to transform normal non-linear resistors to inverse non-linear resistors is also addressed. HSPICE numerical simulations for each topology are also shown. Finally, three real analogue applications based on memristors are analysed and explained at the behavioural level of abstraction