Development of Advanced Programmable Memristors

Structured Materials Industries, Inc. (SMI), working with others have demonstrated functioning fundamental memristor material technology. In this program, working with our University partner and end use collaborators, we propose to provide an infrastructure for making memristor materials at production scales, expand/refine the known memristor materials, provide samples of the produced memristor materials to all qualified requestors, and explore specific applications of the memristor materials. In Phase I we will demonstrate an expanded set of well characterized memristor materials – sampling them and evaluate explicit range of applications with a focus on their application to nonvolatile and radiation hard memory. In Phase II we will continue the development efforts, but on 6” and 8” wafers – becoming a material source for our focused application and for all developers/end users/implementers of the technology. We will specifically demonstrate refinement, diversification and scaled producibility of radiation resistant materials we have already produced, for bipolar (~10E5 change in resistance), reversible, low power consuming, non-volatile, fast switching (<100nsec) element integrated into nanoscale Si memory. In Phase III SMI will serve as a materials and process tool technology foundry for all memristor developers and manufactures of devices incorporating memristors. BENEFIT: The memristor is a nonlinear circuit element that no combination of resistors, inductors and capacitors can duplicate and thus represent a new opportunity to transform how circuits operate; however, to realize this opportunity sources of memristor materials and circuit elements are needed for application development – this program will enable that availability for all end users are needed. Target applications include: tunable RF circuits in software defined radios, delta sigma modulators, A/D converters, and non-volatile memory elements – among many others that include non-Boolean neuromorphic computing enablement. This project will enable SMI to fulfill the market need for research materials as well as for the tools to make the materials and devices.