Memristors in History

Memristors: They’ve been here all along!

In the upcoming June issue of Nature, Leon Chua, Themistoklis Prodromakis, and Christofer Toumazou have written commentary on Memristors in history, titled: “Two Centuries of Memristors” [commentary abstract].

The commentary looks back at 200 years of materials and research to show evidence of memristive states as an observable phenomena of nature. Thermistors, electric arcs, and voltaic piles (1808) in the work of Michael Faraday and Sir Humphry Davy are all shown to exhibit memristive behavior.

The current state of research into memristors and memristive behavior shows that such variable resistance systems are found in many areas: the number of types of memristors range from titanium and silicon oxide material vacancies to phase change materials.