Transient response characteristic of memristor circuits and biological-like current spikes

Abstract

Although memristors are mostly considered as a strong candidate for physical realization of synapses in neuromorphic systems, implementation of biologically plausible neurons with memristors creates a great potential to integrate both synapses and neurons on memristor fabrics, such as memristor crossbars. Here we present a discussion regarding transient current response of memristors, and the way we can reproduce biological-like current spikes with very basic memristor circuits. In general, memristor shows a spike-like current response to step changes of the input voltage, which can be used in voltage-excited neuromorphic systems. Accordingly, the properties of current response of single and multiple memristor circuits are investigated in this work. The factors which can affect the shape of the spike-like current response are discussed. Furthermore, it is shown that current spike generated by serially connected memristor and capacitor can exhibit spikes with variety of signaling characteristics. We also discuss about the spike train generated using memristor excited by voltage square wave input. Finally, using memristor and capacitor, a spike-forming circuit is presented in which voltage square wave input is converted to biological-like current spike train.