Memristor system properties and its design applications to circuits such as nonvolatile memristor memories

Abstract

Novel nonvolatile universal memory technology is essential for providing required storage for nano-computing. As a potential contender for the next-generation memory, the recently found "the missing fourth circuit element", memristor, has drawn a great deal of research interests. In this paper, by starting from basic memristor device equations that assumes constant ion mobility, we develop a comprehensive set of properties and design equations for memristor based memories. Our analyses are specifically targeting key electrical memristor device characteristics relevant to, but not limited to, memory operations. However, like many nano devices, a small voltage drop across the memristor will yield an enormous electric field, which may produce significant highly nonlinear ionic transport that the linear drift assumption no longer holds for realistic memristors. Issues such as how to design circuits facing such nonlinear drift will be discussed. In addition, issues such as how to sense the memory states and perturbations during sensing will be addressed. In this paper, we demonstrate that we can successfully use the derived properties based on the linear drift model to design read and write circuits and analyze important data integrity and noise-tolerance issues for realistic nonlinear drift models.

On the performance of a hybrid memristor/MOS π-attenuator circuit

“…However, memristive-based circuits can be simulated using memristor SPICE models based on experimentally reported TiO 2 memristor results [2]. The memristive range can be modified by scaling from the experimental results [4] and the memristor capacitance can be determined, to first order, from the device geometry and material properties [4][5][6]. This allows the fundamental performance of memristor-based circuits to be explored in anticipation of wider spread device availability and application specific memristor technology development.…”

“…This work went largely unnoticed until 2008 when Strukov, et.al., of Hewlett Packard (HP) published the first model description and experimental results of a physical TiO 2 nanoscale memristive device [2] using processes compatible with modern semiconductor fabrication technology [3]. Since this physical development, memristors have been of wide interest due to their unique behavior of resistance memory (memristance) [1,3,4].…”

“…Much of the recent application research considers using the memristor in new nonvolatile memory architectures [4] or as crossbar switches [7,8] based on switching the device from a low memristance "on" state to high memristance "off" state. But in other works, the memristor is considered for analog applications based on its continuum of programmable memristance and unique frequency characteristics [9][10][11][12][13][14][15].…”

A novel write-scheme for data integrity in memristor-based crossbar memories

“…However, this approach severely impacts the density advantage of memristor arrays. [10] [11] have shown that the reading phase can be made tolerant to data corruption by applying a sequence of two opposite voltage values; however, as described in [6] the write method has additional issues due to its intrinsically asymmetric nature. this aspect will be analyzed in this manuscript.…”

Memristor-based memory: The sneak paths problem and solutions

“…Since the first reported use of the memristor, it received a significant of attention in the research community. In addition to be used as a memory element [2,[17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26], the memristor has found many applications in oscillators [27][28][29][30], logic and arithmetic circuits [31,32], programmable analog circuits [33,34], and in modeling and emulation of natural phenomena [35,36].…”