Editor's Summary
1 May 2008
Memristance movement
Basic electronics textbooks list three fundamental passive circuit elements: resistors, capacitors and inductors. But nearly forty years ago, Leon Chua predicted the existence of a fourth, the memristor — in effect a nonlinear resistor with memory. A paper from the Hewlett-Packard research lab now reports that memristance arises naturally in nanoscale systems where solid-state electronic and ionic transport are coupled under an external bias voltage. This finding can help explain many examples of apparently anomalous hysteretic current–voltage behaviour observed in electronic devices during the past 50 years. Memristors may have a significant impact on future electronic circuits by dramatically increasing the functional density over that achieved by transistors.
News and Views: Electronics: The fourth element
Almost four decades since its existence was first proposed, a fourth basic circuit element joins the canonical three. The 'memristor' might herald a step-change in the march towards ever more powerful circuitry.
James M. Tour & Tao He
doi:10.1038/453042a
Letter: The missing memristor found
Dmitri B. Strukov, Gregory S. Snider, Duncan R. Stewart & R. Stanley Williams
doi:10.1038/nature06932
