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

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

Simple Floating Voltage-Controlled Memductor Emulator for Analog Applications

The topic of memristive circuits is a novel topic in circuit theory that has become of great importance due to its unique behavior which is useful in different applications. But since there is a lack of memristor samples, a memristor emulator is used instead of a solid state memristor. In this paper, a new simple floating voltage-controlled memductor emulator is introduced which is implemented using commercial off the shelf (COTS) realization. The mathematical modeling of the proposed circuit is derived to match the theoretical model. The proposed circuit is tested experimentally using different excitation signals such as sinusoidal, square, and triangular waves showing an excellent matching with previously reported simulations

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

New Modified Voltage Differencing Voltage Transconductance Amplifier (MVDVTA) based Meminductor Emulator and its Applications

This paper presents a new modified voltage differencing voltage transconductance amplifier (MVDVTA) basedmeminductor emulator circuit. The proposed emulator circuit is memristor-less, uses only a single active building block(ABB) and has simple circuitry. The MVDVTA based emulator design consists of only two capacitors and a single resistor.The performance of the proposed design has been verified over a wide frequency span. For simulation purpose LTSpice toolis used with 0.18μm CMOS technology. The proposed emulator has also been employed in chaotic oscillator and adaptivelearning application circuit to verify its workability. The proposed design gives satisfactory performance for both theapplications, hence confirming its functionality in practical environment

Chaotic memristor

We suggest and experimentally demonstrate a chaotic memory resistor (memristor). The core of our approach is to use a resistive system whose equations of motion for its internal state variables are similar to those describing a particle in a multi-well potential. Using a memristor emulator, the chaotic memristor is realized and its chaotic properties are measured. A Poincar\'{e} plot showing chaos is presented for a simple nonautonomous circuit involving only a voltage source directly connected in series to a memristor and a standard resistor. We also explore theoretically some details of this system, plotting the attractor and calculating Lyapunov exponents. The multi-well potential used resembles that of many nanoscale memristive devices, suggesting the possibility of chaotic dynamics in other existing memristive systems.Comment: Applied Physics A (in press