Sprightly, a word not often used in conjunction with technology of any kind, is the best of way describing the approach that researchers Varun Aggarwal and Gaurav Gandhi, along with Dr. Leon Chua, have taken towards their discovery that memristors are all around us. ( For anyone not familiar with the concept, I suggest reading the Wikipedia essay on memristors as it includes information about the various critiques of the memristor definition, as well as, the definition.)
It was Dexter Johnson in his June 6, 2013 post on the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) Nanoclast blog who alerted me to this latest memristor work (Note: Links have been removed),
Two researchers from mLabs in India, along with Prof. Leon Chua at the University of California Berkeley, who first postulated the memristor in a paper back in 1971, have discovered the simplest physical implementation for the memristor, which can be built by anyone and everyone.
In two separate papers, one published in arXiv (“Bipolar electrical switching in metal-metal contacts”) and the other in the IEEE’s own Circuits and Systems Magazine (“The First Radios Were Made Using Memristors!”), Chua and the researchers, Varun Aggarwal and Gaurav Gandhi, discovered that simple imperfect point contacts all around us act as memristors.
“Our arXiv paper talks about the coherer, which comprises an imperfect metal-metal contact in embodiments such as a point contact between two metallic balls, granular media or a metal-mercury interface,” Gandhi explained to me via e-email. “On the other hand, the CAS paper comprises an imperfect metal-semiconductor contact (Cat’s Whisker) which was also the first solid-state diode. Both the systems have as their signature an imperfect point contact between two conducting/partially-conducting elements. Both act like memristor.”
I’ll get to the articles in a minutes, first let’s look at the researchers’ website, Mlabs home page (splash page). BTW, I have a soft spot for websites that are easy to navigate and don’t irritate me with movement or pop-ups (thank you mLabs). I think this description of the researchers (Aggarwal and Gandhi) and how they came to develop mLabs (excerpted from the About us page) explains why I described their approach as sprightly,
As they say, anything can happen over a cup of coffee and this story is no different! Gaurav and Varun were friends for over a decade, and one fine day they were sitting at a coffee house discussing Gaurav’s trip to the Second Memristor and Memristive Symposium at Berkeley. Gaurav shared the exciting work around memristor that he witnessed at Berkeley. Varun, who has been an evangelist of Jagadish Chandra Bose’s work thought there was some correlation between the research work of Bose and memristor. He convinced Gaurav to look deeper into these aspects. Soon, a plan was put forth, they wore their engineering gloves and mLabs was born. Gaurav quit his job for full time involvement at mLabs, while Varun assisted and advised throughout.
Three years of curiosity, experimentation, discussions and support from various researchers and professors from different parts of the world, led us to where we are today.
We are also sincerely grateful to Prof. Leon Chua for his continuous support, mentorship and indispensable contribution to our work.
As Dexter notes, Aggarwal and Gandhi have written papers about two different ways to create memristors, the arXiv paper, Bipolar electrical switching in metal-metal contacts, describes how corherers could be used to create simple memristors for research purposes. This paper also makes the argument that the memristor is a fundamental circuit (a claim which is a matter of considerable debate as the Wikipedia Memristor essay notes briefly),
Our new results show that bipolar switching can be observed in a large class of metals by a simple construction in form of a point-contact or granular media. It does not require complex construction, particular materials or small geometries. The signature of all our devices is an imperfect metal-metal contact and the physical mechanism for the observed behavior needs to be further studied. That the electrical behavior of these simple, naturally-occurring physical constructs can be modeled by a memristor, but not the other three passive elements, is an indication of its fundamental nature. By providing the canonic physical implementation for memristor, the present work not only lls an important gap in the study of switching devices, but also brings them into the realm of immediate practical use and implementation.
Due to the fact that the second article, the one in the IEEE published Circuits and Systems magazine, is behind a paywall, I can’t do much more than offer the title and the first paragraph,
The First Radios Were Made Using Memristors!
In 2008, Williams et al. reported the discovery of the fourth fundamental passive circuit element, memristor, which exhibits electrically controllable state-dependent resistance [1]. We show that one of the first wireless radio detector, called cat?s whisker, also the world?s first solid-state diode, had memristive properties. We have identified the state variable governing the resistance state of the device and can program it to switch between multiple stable resistance states. Our observations and results are valid for a larger class of devices called coherers, which include the cat?s whisker. These devices constitute the missing canonical physical implementations for a memristor (ref. Fig. 1).
It’s fascinating when you consider that up until now researching memristors meant having high tech equipment. I wonder how many backyard memristor labs are going to spring up?
On a somewhat related note, Dexter mentions that HP Labs ‘memristor’ products will be available in 2014. This latest date represents two postponements. Originally meant to be on the market in the summer of 2013, the new products were then supposed to brought to market in late 2013 as per my Feb. 7, 2013 posting; scroll down about 75% of the way).
