Memristor Model Comparison

Since the 2008-dated discovery of memristor behavior at the nano-scale, Hewlett Packard is credited for, a large deal of efforts have been spent in the research community to derive a suitable model able to capture the nonlinear dynamics of the nano-scale structures. Despite a considerable number of models of different complexity have been proposed in the literature, there is an ongoing debate over which model should be universally adopted for the investigation of the unique opportunities memristors may offer in integrated circuit design. In order to shed some light into this passionate discussion, this paper compares some of the most noteworthy memristor models present in the literature. The strength of the Pickett's model stands in its experiment-based development and in its ability to describe some physical mechanism at the origin of memristor dynamics. Since its parameter values depend on the excitation of the memristor and/or on the circuit employing the memristor, it may be assumed as a reference for comparison only in those scenarios for which its parameters were reported in the literature. In this work various noteworthy memristor models are fitted to the Pickett's model under one of such scenarios. This study shows how three models, Biolek's model, the Boundary Condition Memristor model and the ThrEshold Adaptive Memristor model, outperform the others in the replica of the dynamics observed in the Pickett's model. In the second part of this work the models are used in a couple of basic circuits to study the variance between the dynamical behaviors they give rise to. This analysis intends to make the circuit designers aware of the different behaviors which may occur in memristor-based circuits according to the memristor model under use.