An experimental proof that resistance-switching memories are not memristors

Abstract

It has been suggested that all resistive-switching memory cells are memristors. The latter are hypothetical, ideal devices whose resistance, as originally formulated, depends only on the net charge that traverses them. Recently, an unambiguous test has been proposed [J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. {\bf 52}, 01LT01 (2019)] to determine whether a given physical system is indeed a memristor or not. Here, we experimentally apply such a test to both in-house fabricated Cu-SiO2 and commercially available electrochemical metallization cells. Our results unambiguously show that electrochemical metallization memory cells are not memristors. Since the particular resistance-switching memories employed in our study share similar features with many other memory cells, our findings refute the claim that all resistance-switching memories are memristors. They also cast doubts on the existence of ideal memristors as actual physical devices that can be fabricated experimentally. Our results then lead us to formulate two memristor impossibility conjectures regarding the impossibility of building a model of physical resistance-switching memories based on the memristor model.

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• Memcapacitors and Meminductors are Overunity Systems!
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• Comment on "$\Phi$ memristor: Real memristor found" by F. Z. Wang, L. Li, L. Shi, H. Wu, and L. O. Chua [J. Appl. Phys. 125, 054504 (2019)]
• Reduction of Joule Losses in Memristive Switching Using Optimal Control
• Low-Power Control of Resistance Switching Transitions in First-Order Memristors
• Minimizing energy dissipation during programming of resistive switching memory devices using their dynamical attractor states
• Nearly ideal memristive functionality based on viscous magnetization dynamics