Design of HSpice Model for Dual-Doped Memristor

by

Ashish Jain (2010035)

Supervisor: Dr. Jawar Singh

Electronics and Communication Engineering

INDIAN INSTITUTE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY, DESIGN AND MANUFACTURING JABALPUR

(20th May 2013 - 5th June 2013)

INTRODUCTION
In 1971 Leon Chua presented the missing circuit element that he called a memristor (memory + resistor). He noted among the six possible combinations of the four fundamental circuit variables, i, v, q and , five have well-known relationships. Two of them are the definition of current and Faradays law and the rest are given by the three circuit elements, resistor(R = dv /dt ), inductor(L = d/di ) and capacitor(C = dq/dv ). Based on the symmetry, he claimed there should be a forth fundamental element called a memristor which is a relation between charge and magnetic flux(M = d/dq ).

Fig.1 Basic circuit elements Although he presented memristors laboratory realization in the form of active circuits, before May 2008 the existence of a memristor in the form of a physical device had not been discovered. In May 2008, scientists at HP labs, led by R. Stanley Williams, announced an invention of a physical device for the memristor. They also presented a physical model of a memristor called the coupled variable resistor model, which works like a perfect memristor under certain conditions.

Fig.2 The coupled variable resistor model A solid-state device could have the characteristics of a memristor based on the behavior of nanoscale thin films. The device neither uses magnetic flux as the theoretical memristor suggested, nor stores charge as a capacitor does, but instead achieves a resistance dependent on the history of current. The HP device is composed of a thin (50 nm) titanium dioxide film between two 5 nm thick electrodes, one Ti, the other Pt. Initially, there are two layers to the

titanium dioxide film, one of which has a slight depletion of oxygen atoms. The oxygen vacancies act as charge carriers, meaning that the depleted layer has a much lower resistance than the non-depleted layer. When an electric field is applied, the oxygen vacancies drift changing the boundary between the high-resistance and low-resistance layers. Thus the resistance of the film as a whole is dependent on how much charge has been passed through it in a particular direction, which is reversible by changing the direction of current. Since the HP device displays fast ion conduction at nanoscale, it is considered as a nanoionic device. Memristance is displayed only when both the doped layer and depleted layer contribute to resistance. When enough charge has passed through the memristor that the ions can no longer move, the device enters hysteresis. It ceases to integrate q=Idt, but rather keeps q at an upper bound and M fixed, thus acting as a constant resistor until current is reversed.

PRESENT INVESTIGATION PROGRESS

In the SPICE model of a memristor presented here, there is a thin semiconductor film that has two regions, one with a high concentration of dopant that behaves like a low resistance called RON and the other with a low dopant concentration with higher resistance called ROFF . The film is sandwiched between two metal contacts (Fig. 2). When we apply a voltage v(t) to the device, the dopants drift from low to high or high to low concentration depending on the voltage polarity. For simplicity, we assume linear ionic drift in a uniform electric field with average ion mobility v . In this case, the V-I characteristic of the device is v(t) = (RON*w(t)/D + ROFF*(1-w(t)/D ))*i(t) .(1) w is the state variable which is the length of the doped region in the thin film (Fig. 2). dw(t)/dt is proportional to the current and therefore w is a function of charge. w(t) = v*RON/D*q(t) .(2) Based on Equations (1) and (2), in fact a memristor is acting like a variable resistor; its resistivity M(q) is a function of charge. M(q) = ROFF-(ROFF-RON) *(v*RON)/D q(t) ..(3) In order to model a variable resistor in SPICE, we first model a regular resistor with a dependent voltage source without using a resistor. Fig. 3 shows how to model a 100 ohm resistor in SPICE. To sense current in the circuit, we use an independent voltage source Vsense which is 0.0 volts and therefore it has no effect on the output voltage. The other source, Vr is a dependent voltage source that generates the voltage across the resistor based on the sensed current times the desired resistance (Vr = I*100), where I is measured at Vsense.

Fig.3 100 resistor subcircuit Now to create a model for a memristor that is a variable resistor, all we need to do is change the value of the voltage source Vr to a function of q based on Equation (3). As shown in Fig. 4, a capacitor Csense is added to sense the charge in the circuit. Note that to cancel the effect of the capacitor voltage on the output voltage, we subtract it from the Vr voltage value. (Vr = I*M-Vc), where Vc is the voltage across Csense.

Fig.4 Memristor subcircuit We validate the model by simulating for different input voltages such as DC, sinusoidal and square wave signals and show a curve here comparing with the expected results. Fig. 5 shows the current of the memristor when a sinusoidal input voltage is applied. The V-I characteristic of the memristor is shown in Fig. 6. (RON = 1; ROFF = 160; D = 10nm; v = 10-14 m/sec.volts) Note that this model is valid as long as the system remains in the memristor regime which, in this case, is where the state variable w is bounded between zero and D. Based on Equation 2, the condition for the memristor regime is as follows:

Fig.5 Voltage and current of the memristor

Fig.6 I-V Curve of memristor

RESULT AND DISCUSSIONS

The SPICE model of the memristor, made up on the basis of state equations and equations modeling the boundary effects. It should be noted that the differences between the behavior of the model in some concrete regimes of the operation and the anticipated behavior of the real circuit element may be due to the current methods of modeling nonlinear dopant drift. That is why the SPICE model of the memristor is designed such that it enables easy modification of the nonlinear relations describing the boundary effects. Such a modification can be done when the relevant data are specified by the manufacturer. Today, a lot of institutions are involved in research into the basic features of the memristor.

CONCLUSION
We have studied the theory of single doped titanium dioxide memristor, and its SPICE modeling. And we are currently doing the extensive study to develop the HSPICE model of the dual doped titanium dioxide memristor.