Philipp Schnicke, Evgeny Ulanov
Capacitor, inductor and resistor were long believed to be the only passive electrical components. However, four decades ago, Prof. Leon O. Chua at Berkeley postulated a fourth fundamental electrical component, the memristor. The latter has the special characteristics that its resistance is controlled by the history of current that has flown through it and that it remembers its state also after withdrawal of the current. The memristor enables a novel type of data storage that could have revolutionary impact on electronics. Data processing and data storage could merge, booting could become unnecessary and data densities could become extremely high. Chua's theory was confirmed in 2008, when Hewlett-Packard developed a memristor based on titanium dioxide.
Within our project, we have constructed a memristor that is based on copper sulfide. We were able to confirm the characteristic properties of a memristor for our homemade device. Furthermore, we succeeded in storing and reading information by changing the current direction and using test currents and an LED.
