Review:

Kirchhoffs Laws
and
Resistive Circuits

EE314 Basic EE II

Review Kirchhoffs Laws

Kirchhoffs Current Law (KCL):

Sum of currents at each supernode is zero

EE314 Basic EE II

Review Kirchhoffs Laws

Kirchhoffs

Voltage Law (KVL):

Sum of voltages at each loop is zero

EE314 Basic EE II

Circuit elements

EE314 Basic EE II

Circuit elements

EE314 Basic EE II

Circuit elements

EE314 Basic EE II

Resistive circuits

EE314 Basic EE II

Resistive circuits

EE314 Basic EE II

Resistive circuits
To analyze a circuit write KCL equations
in
all super nodes except one
Use voltage information and controlled
source gains

EE314 Basic EE II

Exercise resistive circuits

Find nodal voltages in this circuit

EE314 Basic EE II

Exercise resistive circuits

Find nodal voltages in this circuit

EE314 Basic EE II

Thevenin equivalent
circuit

EE314 Basic EE II

Finding Thevenin
equivalent
Twoterminal
circuit

A
+
_

Three step process:

Vt

1. Find voltage on
open terminals A-B

in

2. Find current on
shorted terminals AB

B
A
Twoterminal
circuit

B
EE314 Basic EE II

Finding Thevenin
equivalent

Rt
Vt

+
_

A
+
_
B

EE314 Basic EE II

Three step process:

3. Find Equivalent
resistance
Rt=Vt/in

Thevenin equivalent
circuit
A

+
Vt

EE314 Basic EE II

Step 1. Find Vt

Thevenin equivalent
circuit
Step 2. Find isc

Step 3. Find
Equivalent
resistance
Rt=Vt/isc

EE314 Basic EE II

Exercise Thevenin
equivalent
Step 1. Find Vt

EE314 Basic EE II

Exercise Thevenin
equivalent
Step 2. Find isc

Step 3. Find
Equivalent
resistance
Rt=Vt/isc

EE314 Basic EE II

Thevenin and Norton

equivalent

EE314 Basic EE II

EE314 Basic EE II

Figure D.1

Multisim results for a simple dc circuit

EE314 Basic EE II

Memristance a new
element
The four circuit quantities (charge, current,
voltage, and magnetic flux) can be related
to each other in six ways.
Two quantities are covered by basic
physical laws, and three are covered by
known circuit elements (resistor, capacitor,
and inductor).
In 1971 Chua proposed the memristor, as
a class of circuit elements based on a
relationship between charge and flux.

EE314 Basic EE II

How memristance works?

Memristor is defined as an element
that relates flux and charge

f q

Memristance value is computed as

M (q )

d
dq

and can be related to voltage current relation as follows

d / dt v(t )
M (q (t ))

dq / dt i (t )

Thus effectively it is a charge dependent resistance

EE314 Basic EE II

Four basic passive

elements
Nonlinear

Linear

Local value

Resistor

v f i v Ri dv R di

Capacitor
q f v q Cv dq C dv

Inductor

f i Li d L di

Memristor
f q Mq d M dq
EE314 Basic EE II

How memristance works?

1 May 2008 Stanley Williams from
HP was able to fabricate and test
memristors using electrical
characteristics of certain nanoscale
devices.
Researchers in HP think the new
element could pave the way for
applications both near- and farterm, from nonvolatile RAM to
realistic neural networks.
Early memristor circuit
EE314 Basic EE II

Memristor design

Memristors build by Williams

EE314 Basic EE II

CROSSBAR ARCHITECTURE:
A memristors structure, shown
here in a scanning tunneling
microscope image, will enable
dense, stable computer memories.

Memristor based design

The most obvious benefit is to memories.
Because memristors remember their state, they can store
data indefinitely, using energy only when you toggle or
read the state of a switch, unlike the capacitors in
conventional DRAM, which will lose their stored charge if
the power to the chip is turned off.
Furthermore, the wires and switches can be made very
small: we should eventually get down to a width of around
4 nm, and then multiple crossbars could be stacked on
top of each other to create a ridiculously high density of
stored bits.
EE314 Basic EE II

How memristance works?

THE CROSSBAR ARCHITECTURE:

The crossbar architecture is a fully connected mesh of perpendicular wires.

Any two crossing wires are connected by a switch.

To close the switch, a positive voltage is applied across the two wires to be connected.

To open the switch, the voltage is reversed.

EE314 Basic EE II

How memristance works?

THE SWITCH:

A switch is a 40-nanometer cube of titanium dioxide (TiO2) in two layers:

The lower TiO2 layer has a perfect 2:1 oxygen-to-titanium ratio, making it an
insulator.

By contrast, the upper TiO2 layer is missing 0.5 percent of its oxygen (TiO2-x).

The vacancies make the TiO2-x material metallic and conductive.

EE314 Basic EE II

How memristance works?

APPLIED MEMRISTANCE:

The oxygen deficiencies in the TiO2-x manifest as bubbles of oxygen

vacancies scattered throughout the upper layer.
A positive voltage on the switch repels the (positive) oxygen deficiencies in the
metallic upper TiO2-x layer, sending them into the insulating TiO2 layer below.
That causes the boundary between the two materials to move down,
increasing the percentage of conducting TiO2-x and thus the conductivity of
the entire switch.
The more positive voltage is applied, the more conductive the cube becomes.
EE314 Basic EE II

How memristance works?

A negative voltage on the switch attracts the positively charged oxygen

bubbles, pulling them out of the TiO2.
The amount of insulating TiO2 increases, making the switch more resistive.
The more negative voltage is applied, the less conductive the cube becomes.

When the voltage is turned off, the oxygen bubbles do not migrate.
They stay where they are, which means that the boundary between the two
titanium dioxide layers is frozen.
That is how the memristor remembers how much voltage was last applied.
EE314 Basic EE II

How memristance works?

Leon Chuas original graph of the hypothetical

memristors behavior is shown at top right;
The graph of R. Stanley Williamss experimental results in
the Nature paper is shown below.

The loops map the switching behavior of the device:

It begins with a high resistance, and as the voltage
increases, the current slowly increases.
As charge flows through the device, the resistance drops,
Then, as the voltage decreases, the current decreases but
more slowly, because charge is flowing through the device
and the resistance is still dropping.

The result is an on-switching loop.

When the voltage turns negative, the resistance of the
device increases, resulting in an off-switching loop.

EE314 Basic EE II

How to implement analog

weights in NN?
THINKING MACHINE?:

EE314 Basic EE II

This artists conception of a

memristor shows a stack of
multiple crossbar arrays.
Because memristors behave
functionally like synapses,
using memristors could lead to
analog circuits that can
simulate synaptic connections
in neural networks.