Date of Award

2010

Document Type

Campus Access Thesis

Department

Physics and Astronomy

Sub-Department

Physics

First Advisor

Yuriy V. Pershin

Abstract

This document begins with a brief review of the concept and properties of memory circuit elements, namely memristors (memory resistors), memcapacitors (memory capacitors) and meminductors (memory inductors). Then, two possible physical realizations of memcapacitors are proposed.

The first of the suggested realizations is a solid-state memory capacitive (memcapacitive) system. Its operation relies on the slow polarization rate of a medium between plates of a regular capacitor. To achieve this goal, a multi-layer structure embedded in a capacitor is considered. The multi-layer structure is formed by metallic layers separated by an insulator so that non-linear electronic transport (tunneling) between the layers can occur. The suggested memcapacitor shows hysteretic charge-voltage and capacitance-voltage curves, and both negative and diverging capacitance within certain ranges of the field. This proposal can be easily realized experimentally, and indicates the possibility of information storage in memcapacitive systems.

The second realization is a membrane memory capacitive system. In such realization, one of the plates of a regular parallel-plate capacitor is proposed to be replaced by an elastic membrane. It is assumed that a strain is applied to the membrane generating low and high capacitance configurations of the system. When an external voltage is applied, the membrane and second plate are attracted to each other due to Coulomb interaction. Hysteresis is obtained in charged-voltage and capacitance-voltage curves. Chaotic behavior is demonstrated for some amplitudes of a sinusoidal applied voltage.

Rights

© 2010, Julian Rodrigo Martinez Rincon

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