Tech Post: Memristor discovered

[dracodraconis]

Researchers at Hewlett-Packard claim to have discovered the long-fabled memristor (memory resistor), completing the basic electrical toolbox of resistor, capacitor, and inductor. It's existence was first postulated in the 1970s but nobody had ever observed one, or had reason to try to make one, until now. They created the memristor by doping titanium dioxide, resulting in a device in which the dopant migrates in the direction of the current. Apply a voltage in one direction and the dopant migrates into the pure titanium dioxide, lowering the resistance. Reverse the polarity and the dopant begins to migrate back, increasing the resistance. Most importantly, when power is removed, the circuit "remembers" the previously-applied voltage, encoded by the dopant, as well as how long the voltage was applied. This has potential application for emulating neural synapses, making it possible to build dense neural networks on-chip. They are now working to find out how to integrate titanium dioxide components with silicon-bsed devices.

Comments

[ancalagon-tb.livejournal.com]

wow.

This is either going to be a mere "oddity", or this will change the world...

[dracodraconis.livejournal.com]

I suspect it will end up as neither, just another useful tool that electrical engineers can draw from. Once its existence gets integrated into standard electrical engineering curricula, then we should see some interesting things come out of it. The first task, however, is to get the circuit element integrated into a silicon substrate. And they realize now that some voltage anomalies that were noted in the past can be attributed to this effect. It will probably end up being reasonably easy to make.