Scientists at HP labs have created a memristor, an electronic component previously thought impossible to build.
As reported on the Wired Gadget Lab blog, scientists at HP Labs have announced the creation of the world’s first memristor, an electric circuit component that has been theorized for several decades, but until now has not been fabricated.
A memristor is one of four basic electrical circuit components, joining the resistor, capacitor, and inductor. The memristor, short for “memory resistor” was first theorized by student Leon Chua in the early 1970s. He developed mathematical equations to represent the memristor, which Chua believed would balance the functions of the other three types of circuit elements.
But what is a memristor? Chua defined the element as a resistor whose resistance level was based on the amount of charge that had passed through the memristor previously. A memristor would retain its resistance level even after power had been shut down.
The HP Labs team used nano-fabrication processes to create an array of 17 memristors The memristor is composed of two layers of titanium dioxide, each with a slightly different resistivity. As electric current is passed through the memristors, the overall resistance of the device changes because the boundary between the layers of titanium dioxide moves.
Chua observed that the memristor had qualities not unlike neurons in the brain. HP scientists agree that memristors could advance neuronal computing. In addition, because memristors retain their resistance when powered down, they could be used to develop new computer memory devices that could retain the specific state of a computer when the power is shut off.
Obviously, this technology is still in its infancy and additional research and development is required before the memristor appears in consumer and industrial products.
Sources:
Gardiner, Bryan, "Scientists Create First Memristor", Wired Gadget Lab Blog, April 30, 2008.
Chua, Leon O, "Memristor—The Missing Circuit Element", IEEE Transactions on Circuit Theory CT-18 (5): 507-519, September 1971.
