A Novel Universal Interface for Constructing Memory Elements for Circuit Applications

The rapid expansion of analog and neuromorphic memristive applications has proven that their reconfigurable and reprogrammable characteristics will be major proponents for pushing beyond Moore’s Law. The lack of easily accessible and reliable solid-state memory elements (mem-elements) results in an ever-increasing body of the research lacking physical verification, and an associated high barrier to entry for researchers. This paper serves to fix this deficiency by introducing a novel universal interface circuit, which when connected to different peripheral circuits, can be used to build fundamental mem-elements. There is an abundance of mem-element emulators, we adopt their advantages into our design to foster practical and broadly applicable mem-element circuits. In comparison to other similar state-of-the-art emulators, our circuit utilized up to 42.9% fewer active components which consumed up to 31.9% less power with an associated reduction of size by 41.7%. Our proposed emulator continues to operate with hysteresis at over 180 kHz, which is two orders of magnitude higher than other similar emulators and commercially available solid-state memristors, whilst maintaining floating terminal connections. Rigorous theoretical, simulation and experimental results are conducted with good agreement with applications given, demonstrating the ability of the universal interface to discretely build mem-elements.