An Experimental Proof that Resistance‐Switching Memory Cells are not Memristors

Abstract

AbstractIt has been suggested that all resistive‐switching memory cells are memristors. The latter are hypothetical, ideal devices whose resistance, as originally formulated, depends only on the net charge that traverses them. Recently, an unambiguous test has been proposed to determine whether a given physical system is indeed a memristor or not. Here, such a test is experimentally applied to both in‐house fabricated Cu‐SiO2 and commercially available electrochemical metallization cells. The results unambiguously show that electrochemical metallization memory cells are not memristors. Since the particular resistance‐switching memories employed in the study share similar features with many other memory cells, the findings refute the claim that all resistance‐switching memories are memristors. They also cast doubts on the existence of ideal memristors as actual physical devices that can be fabricated experimentally. The results then lead to formulate two memristor impossibility conjectures regarding the impossibility of building a model of physical resistance‐switching memories based on the memristor model.