English

Memristor equations: incomplete physics and undefined passivity/activity

Emerging Technologies 2017-08-28 v4

Abstract

In his seminal paper, Chua presented a fundamental physical claim by introducing the memristor, "The missing circuit element". The memristor equations were originally supposed to represent a passive circuit element because, with active circuitry, arbitrary elements can be realized without limitations. Therefore, if the memristor equations do not guarantee that the circuit element can be realized by a passive system, the fundamental physics claim about the memristor as "missing circuit element" loses all its weight. The question of passivity/activity belongs to physics thus we incorporate thermodynamics into the study of this problem. We show that the memristor equations are physically incomplete regarding the problem of passivity/activity. As a consequence, the claim that the present memristor functions describe a passive device lead to unphysical results, such as violating the Second Law of thermodynamics, in infinitely large number of cases. The seminal memristor equations cannot introduce a new physical circuit element without making the model more physical such as providing the Fluctuation Dissipation Theory of memristors.

Cite

@article{arxiv.1703.09064,
  title  = {Memristor equations: incomplete physics and undefined passivity/activity},
  author = {Kyle Sundqvist and David K. Ferry and Laszlo B. Kish},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1703.09064},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

Accepted for publication in Fluctuation and Noise Letters (August 5)

R2 v1 2026-06-22T18:57:52.985Z