The memristor (a contraction of the words "memory" and "resistor") was a term coined in 1971 by the electrical engineer Leon Chua and that could be defined, in a general way, as the forms of non-volatile two-terminal memory devices. , based on the effects of commutative resistance (variable resistance).
In other words, the new material developed by the Department of Physics and Nanosystems of the Institute of Laser and Plasma Technology of the National University of Nuclear Research MEPhI (Moscow Engineering Physics Institute), which can store and process data in a similar way to human brain neurons, could serve as the basis for developing a memristor-based computer .
Emulating the brain
Membrane computing is a new data processing method in which short-term (RAM) and long-term (hard disk) memories are operated by elements that are similar to neurons in the human brain. To achieve this effect, various materials have been tested .
Finally, MEPhI scientists have opted for the epitaxial fields that form on the surface of a monocrystalline strontium titanate substrate (epitaxy is a regular and organized growth of one crystalline substance over another). As Andrei Ivanov , Associate Professor in the Department of Solid State Physics and Nanosystems at MEPhI explains:
The innovation in this research is the application of lithography that allows the development of technology for the miniaturization of resistive memory elements.