PRESENTED BY

KRITI AGARWAL
ECE
070026
Memristors / RRAM

Principle
Working
Analogy
Applications
Conclusions
New Horizons
Memristor, HP labs
 THE PROBLEM

Flash memory currently commands

the vast majority of the multibillion
dollar non-volatile memory market,
but experts agree that Flash memory
feature sizes may not continue to
scale well into the near future. As a
result, most big players in the market
are researching potential
alternatives.
PROPOSED SOLUTION- RRAM

1 May 2008, 37 years after

Chua proposed the new element
Stanley Williams from HP was
able to fabricate and test
Memristors using electrical
characteristics of certain
nanoscale devices.

Resistive random-access
memory (RRAM) is a new non-
volatile memory type which
promises to replace the existing flash
memory
 PRINCIPLE:
•Resistive switching memories are based
on materials whose resistivity can be
electrically switched between high and
low conductive states.

•The behavior of a RRAM appear closer to

that found in hysteresis curves
associated with magnetic materials. As
observed above that two straight line
segments are formed within the curve.
These two straight line curves may be
interpreted as two distinct resistance
states with the remainder of the curve as
transition regions between these two
states. .
•The fourth mystery
element that joins the capacitor, resistor,
and inductor.

•The world’s smallest memristive switch.

– (50 x 50 nanometers)

•Information storage device.

•A concentration of memory resistors

 Memristor based design

 Because memristors remember

their state, they can store data
indefinitely, using energy only when
you toggle or read the state of a
switch, unlike the capacitors in
conventional DRAM, which will lose
their stored charge if the power to the
chip is turned off.

 Furthermore, the wires and switches

can be made very small: we should
eventually get down to a width of around 4
nm, and then multiple crossbars could be
stacked on top of each other to create a
ridiculously high density of stored bits.
 How memristance works?

THE CROSSBAR ARCHITECTURE:

 The crossbar architecture is a fully connected mesh of perpendicular wires.

 Any two crossing wires are connected by a switch.

 To close the switch, a positive voltage is applied across the two wires to be connected.

 To open the switch, the voltage is reversed.

 How memristance works?

THE SWITCH:
 A switch is a 40-nanometer cube of titanium dioxide (TiO2) in two layers:
 The lower TiO2 layer has a perfect 2:1 oxygen-to-titanium ratio, making it an
insulator.
 By contrast, the upper TiO2 layer is missing 0.5 percent of its oxygen (TiO2-x),
so x is about 0.05.
 The vacancies make the TiO2-x material metallic and conductive.
 How memristance works?

APPLIED MEMRISTANCE:
• The oxygen deficiencies in the TiO2-x manifest as “bubbles” of oxygen
vacancies scattered throughout the upper layer.
• A positive voltage on the switch repels the (positive) oxygen deficiencies in the
metallic upper TiO2-x layer, sending them into the insulating TiO2 layer below.
• That causes the boundary between the two materials to move down,
increasing the percentage of conducting TiO2-x and thus the conductivity of
the entire switch.
• The more positive voltage is applied, the more conductive the cube becomes.
 How memristance works?

• A negative voltage on the switch attracts the positively charged oxygen

bubbles, pulling them out of the TiO2.
– The amount of insulating TiO2 increases, making the switch more resistive.
– The more negative voltage is applied, the less conductive the cube becomes.
• When the voltage is turned off, the oxygen bubbles do not migrate.
– They stay where they are, which means that the boundary between the two
titanium dioxide layers is frozen.
– That is how the memristor “remembers” how much voltage was last applied.
 ANALOGY

memristor behaves like a pipe whose diameter varies according to

the amount and direction of current passing through it.
The diameter of pipe remains same when the current is switched off,
until it is switched on again.
The pipe, when the current is switched on again, remembers what
current has flowed through it.
 WHAT SETS MEMRISTOR APART ?

• Conventional devices use

only 0 and 1; Memristors can
• Faster than Flash memory.
use anything between 0 and
1 (0.3, 0.8, 0.5, etc.)
• Innovating nanotechnology
due to the fact that it
• By changing the speed and
performs better the smaller it
strength of the current, it is
becomes.
possible to change the
behavior of the device.
• A soft and slow current
causes it to act as an analog
• A fast and hard current
device.
causes it to act as a digital
device.
 FUTURE TECHNOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE

• Could lead to the replacement of the transistor

• Used in common devices for unbelievable storage.

– Camera can take days worth of video with storage the size of an
average thumb drive.

• Hope to one day have a computer that processes information in the

same way as the human brain.
– Gaining control over the device could lead to computers that actually
learn.
 Memristors...Made of Blood?

Wiring devices like cochlear implants, nerve-triggered artificial limbs and artificial

 eyeballs into the body at the moment involves a terribly difficult integration of
metal wiring--with all the associated risk of infection and rejection.

A team of scientists in Gujarat have shown they can produce a microscopic

biological device that would behave in a similar way to a microscopic memristor

Bio-Memristors could be hooked together to make computing devices, and that's a

next step for the research team.
 REFRENCES

• WWW.WIKIPEDIA.COM
• WWW.HOWSTUFFWORKS.COM
• LEON CHUA’S PAPER, 1971
• HTTP://WWW.MEMRISTOR.ORG/
THANK YOU !