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. 2018 Jul 20;8(1):10972.
doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-29394-7.

The case for rejecting the memristor as a fundamental circuit element

Isaac Abraham  1
Affiliations

The case for rejecting the memristor as a fundamental circuit element

Isaac Abraham. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

The memory resistor with the moniker memristor was a harmless postulate in 1971. Since 2008 a device that claims to be the memristor is on the prowl, seeking recognition as a fundamental circuit element, sometimes wanting electronics textbooks to be rewritten, always promising remarkable digital, analog and neuromorphic computing possibilities. A systematic discussion about the fundamental nature of the device is almost absent within the memristor community. Advocates use incomplete constitutive relationships, ignore concepts of activity/passivity and aver that nonlinearity is central to their case. Few researchers have examined these claims. Our report investigates the assertion that the memristor is a fundamental passive circuit element, from the fresh perspective that electrical engineering is the science of charge management. We demonstrate with a periodic table of fundamental elements that the 2008 memristor is not the 1971 postulate and neither of them is fundamental. The ideal memristor is an unphysical active device and any physically realizable memristor is a nonlinear composition of resistors with active hysteresis. We also show that there exists only three fundamental passive circuit elements.

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Conflict of interest statement

The author declares no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Fundamentals of electrical engineering in the charge-voltage perspective. (a) Charge stored on a capacitor generates voltage ν. (b) A rate of charge (current) through a resistor generates voltage ν and magnetic field. (c) Rate of rate of charge (di/dt) in an inductor generates voltage ν and a magnetic field. Rate of rate is indicated by the double charge-and-arrow.
Figure 2
Figure 2
The periodic table of fundamental passive elements in the charge-voltage domain.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Chart of fundamental passive elements in the charge-voltage domain. (a) Strukov’s interpretation attributed to Chua. (b) Our representation shows Strukov’s chart as a subset enclosed within the blue dashed rectangle.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Periodic table of fundamental elements in the charge-flux (magnetic) and charge-voltage domains.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Memristor circuit model with flux based hysteresis. (a) Hysteresis is necessary to correctly select the low or high resistance at a predetermined flux threshold. (b) Current-voltage curve with hysteresis marked in the voltage domain.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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