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Will rlcZONE Have To Change To rlcmZONE?
by Alex Mendelsohn
When I studied physics in high school, textbook theory taught us there were three states of matter: solids, liquids, and gases. Imagine my astonishment when, some years later, I learned there was a fourth state of matter: plasma.
Likewise, my formal education in electronics introduced three circuit elements: resistance, inductance, and capacitance. These defined the universe of electricity and electronics – until now.
Like the plasma state of matter, it turns out there's another physical attribute to electronics physics. For want of a better name it's called memristance. Passive devices using memristance are called memory resistors, or memristors.
Interestingly enough, this isn't new. Leon O Chua, an engineering student studying non-linear circuits, postulated the memristor more than a quarter of a century ago. In 1971 Chua published a paper entitled The Memristor: The Missing Circuit Element. In it he named the effect, and offered a series of equations to make his point. The memristor should exist, he said, but there was no way to physically prove it.
Times change. Thanks to nanoparticle research and development, Chua's vision has come to pass. Researchers at Hewlett-Packard, studying the properties of organic molecules, now report the development of memristance. The HP team just published a paper in Nature, The International Weekly Journal of Science, entitled The Missing Memristor Found. HP says memristance in nanoscale systems occurs when physical transport mechanisms are coupled when bias voltage is applied, with a change in resistance due to the movement of oxygen atoms in response to the electrical charge. The effect essentially remembers the applied voltage, and for how long it was applied.
From a practical viewpoint, HP claims titanium dioxide nano memristors may make it possible to fabricate not only nonvolatile binary logic, but also multi-state or multi-level logic. As reported in IEEE Spectrum magazine, HP says it has constructed working circuits using 15-nm-sized memristors.
Wow. Think of all the physics and engineering textbooks that have to be re-written.
Comments? Questions? Write me at amm at en-genius dot net, or post your comments on our blog.
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