The fourth fundamental circuit element: principle and applications

The relationships between four basic circuit variables - voltage (v), current (i), charge (q), and magnetic flux (ϕ) - have defined three fundamental circuit elements: resistor, capacitor, and inductor. From a symmetry view, there is a fourth fundamental circuit element defined from the relationship between charge and magnetic flux. Historically, a device called memristor was considered to be the fourth element, but it has caused intense controversy because the memristor is conceived based on a nonlinear i-v relationship rather than a direct q-ϕ relationship. Alternatively, a direct correlation between trapped charge (q) and magnetic flux (ϕ) can be built up by employing the magnetoelectric (ME) effects, i.e., magnetic field control of electric polarization and electric field control of magnetization. In this review, we summarize recent progress on the principle and applications of the fourth circuit element based on the ME effects. Both the fourth linear element and nonlinear memelement, termed transtor and memtranstor, respectively, have been proposed and experimentally demonstrated. A complete relational diagram of fundamental circuit elements has been constructed. The transtor with a linear ME effect can be used in a variety of applications such as the energy harvester, tunable inductor, magnetic sensor, gyrator, and transformer etc. The memtranstor showing a pinched hysteresis loop has a great potential in developing low-power nonvolatile electronic devices. The principle is to utilize the states of the ME coefficient αE=dE/dH, instead of resistance, magnetization or electric polarization to store information. Both nonvolatile memories and logic functions can be implemented using the memtranstors, which provides a candidate route toward the logic-in-memory computing system. In addition, artificial synaptic devices that are able to mimic synaptic behaviors have also been realized using the memtranstor. The fourth circuit element and memelement based on the ME effects provide extra degrees of freedom to broaden circuit functionalities and develop advanced electronic devices.

A New Memristive Neuron Map Model and Its Network’s Dynamics under Electrochemical Coupling

A memristor is a vital circuit element that can mimic biological synapses. This paper proposes the memristive version of a recently proposed map neuron model based on the phase space. The dynamic of the memristive map model is investigated by using bifurcation and Lyapunov exponents’ diagrams. The results prove that the memristive map can present different behaviors such as spiking, periodic bursting, and chaotic bursting. Then, a ring network is constructed by hybrid electrical and chemical synapses, and the memristive neuron models are used to describe the nodes. The collective behavior of the network is studied. It is observed that chemical coupling plays a crucial role in synchronization. Different kinds of synchronization, such as imperfect synchronization, complete synchronization, solitary state, two-cluster synchronization, chimera, and nonstationary chimera, are identified by varying the coupling strengths.

Comparative analyses of electrical circuits with conventional and revisited definitions of circuit elements: a fractional conformable calculus approach

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to comparatively analyze the electrical circuits defined with the conventional and revisited time domain circuit element definitions in the context of fractional conformable calculus and to promote the combined usage of conventional definitions, fractional conformable derivative and conformable Laplace transform. Design/methodology/approach The RL, RC, LC and RLC circuits described by both conventional and revisited time domain circuit element definitions has been analyzed by means of the fractional conformable derivative based differential equations and conformable Laplace transform. The comparison among the obtained results and those based on the methodologies adopted in the previous works has been made. Findings The author has found that the conventional definitions-based solution gives a physically reasonable result unlike its revisited definitions-based counterpart and the solutions based on those previous methodologies. A strong agreement to the time domain state space concept-based solution can be observed. The author has also shown that the scalar valued solution can be directly obtained by singularity free conformable Laplace transform-based methodology unlike such state space concept based one. Originality/value For the first time, the revisited time domain definitions of resistance and inductance have been proposed and applied together with the revisited definition of capacitance in electrical circuit analyses. The advantage of the combined usage of conventional time definitions, fractional conformable derivative and conformable Laplace transform has been suggested and the impropriety of applying the revisited definitions in circuit analysis has been pointed out.

Common mechanisms of attractorless oscillatory regimes in radioengineering models of brain thalamocortical network

This work aims to show that long transient processes in mesascale models of thalamocortical brain network can appear in very general case, in particular for different number of elements in the ensemble (different level of detalization) and different initial phase of external driving, with these regimes surviving at small variations of number and structure of couplings. Methods. Thalamocortical brain networks are modelled using electronic circuit realized using computer SPICE eluating software. FitzHugh – Nagumo analog generator is used as a single circuit element. Results. Long quasiregular and nonregular oscillation processes with stationary amplitude were shown to occur in ensembles of 14, 28 and 56 model FitzHug – Nagumo generators. The dependency of transient process length on the external driving initial phase and particular coupling matrix structure was studied. Conclusion. The proposed electronic models of thalamocortical system were proved to reproduce the pathological regimes of brain activity in similar way despite the number of elements in the circuit, connectivity matrix and initial driving phase.

Analog programing of conducting-polymer dendritic interconnections and control of their morphology

Although materials and processes are different from biological cells’, brain mimicries led to tremendous achievements in parallel information processing via neuromorphic engineering. Inexistent in electronics, we emulate dendritic morphogenesis by electropolymerization in water, aiming in operando material modification for hardware learning. Systematic study of applied voltage-pulse parameters details on tuning independently morphological aspects of micrometric dendrites’: fractal number, branching degree, asymmetry, density or length. Growths time-lapse image processing shows spatial features to be dynamically dependent, and expand distinctively before and after conductive bridging with two electro-generated dendrites. Circuit-element analysis and impedance spectroscopy confirms their morphological control in temporal windows where growth kinetics is finely perturbed by the input frequency and duty cycle. By the emulation of one’s most preponderant mechanisms for brain’s long-term memory, its implementation in vicinity of sensing arrays, neural probes or biochips shall greatly optimize computational costs and recognition required to classify high-dimensional patterns from complex environments.

Radiation-Tolerant All-Digital PLL/CDR with Varactorless LC DCO in 65 nm CMOS

This paper presents the first fully integrated radiation-tolerant All-Digital Phase-Locked Loop (PLL) and Clock and Data Recovery (CDR) circuit for wireline communication applications. Several radiation hardening techniques are proposed to achieve state-of-the-art immunity to Single-Event Effects (SEEs) up to 62.52/mg as well as tolerance to the Total Ionizing Dose (TID) exceeding 1.5Grad. The LC Digitally Controlled Oscillator (DCO) is implemented without MOS varactors, avoiding the use of a highly SEE sensitive circuit element. The circuit is designed to operate at reference clock frequencies from 40–320 or at data rates from 40Mbps–320Mbps and displays a jitter performance of 520 with a power dissipation of only 11 and an FOM of −235 .

The Influence of Adding a Functionalized Fluoroalkyl Silanes (PFDTES) into a Novel Silica-Based Hybrid Coating on Corrosion Protection Performance on an Aluminium 2024-t3 Alloy

Silica-based coatings prepared using sol-gel polymerizing technology have been shown to exhibit excellent chemical stability combined with reducing the corrosion of metal substrates, showing promising use in aerospace and marine applications to protect light alloys. Moreover, this technology is an eco-friendly technique route for producing surface coatings, showing high potential for replacing toxic pre-treatment coatings of traditional conversation chromate coatings. This study aims to investigate the enhancement in corrosion protection of a hybrid-organic-inorganic silica-based coating cured at 80 °C by increasing the hydrophobicity to work on the aluminium 2024-T3 alloy. This approach involving a novel silica-based hybrid coating was prepared by introducing 1H,1H,2H,2H-perfluorodecyltriethoxysilane (PFDTES) into the base hybrid formula created from tetraethylorthosilicatesilane (TEOS) and triethoxymethylsilane (MTMS) precursors; this formula was enhanced by introducing a Polydimethylsiloxane polymer (PDMS). The corrosion protection properties of these coatings were examined by being immersed in 3.5% NaCl with electrochemical impedance testing (EIS) and Potentiodynamic polarization scanning (PDPS). The chemical elements confirmation was performed using infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR); all this was supported by analysing the surface morphology before and after the immersion by using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The results of the electrochemical impedance testing analyses reveal the new open finite-length diffusion circuit element due to electrolyte media diffusion prevented by fluorinated groups. Additionally, it shows increases in corrosion protection arising from the increasing hydrophobicity of the fluorinated coating compared to other formulas cured under similar conditions and bare substrate. Additionally, the modified sol-gel exhibited improved resistance to cracking, while the increased hydrophobicity may also promote self-cleaning.

A Novel Refreshment Circuit for 2T1M Neuromorphic Synapse

Neuromorphic systems are the future computing systems to overcome the von Neumann’s power consumption and latency wall between memory and processing units. The two main components of any neuromorphic computing system are neurons and synapses. Synapses carry the weight of the system to be multiplied by the neuromorphic attributes, which represent the features of the task to be solved. Memristor (memoryresistor) is the most suitable circuit element to act as a synapse. Its ability to store, update and do matrix multiplication in nanoscale die area makes it very useful in neuromorphic synapses. One of the most popular memristor synapse configurations is the two-transistor–one-memristor (2T1M) synapse. This configuration is very useful in neuromorphic synapses for its ability to control reading and updating the weight on a chip by signals. The main problem with this synapse is that the reading operation is destructive, which results in changing the stored weight value. In this paper, a novel refreshment circuit is proposed to restore the correct weight in case of any destructive reading operations. The circuit makes a small interrupt time during operation without disconnecting the memristor, which makes the circuit very practical. The circuit has been simulated by using hardware-calibrated CMOS TSMC 130[Formula: see text]nm technology on Cadence Virtuoso and linear ion drift memristor Verilog-A model. The proposed circuit achieves the refreshment task accurately for several error types. It is used to refresh 2T1M synapse with any destructive reading signal shape.

Parameter Optimization of Double LCC MCRWPT System Based on ZVS

At present, magnetically coupled resonance wireless power transfer (MCRWPT) is the main technology used in electric vehicle wireless power transfer (WPT) due to its advantages of high transmission power and high efficiency. The resonant compensation circuit of the system generally adopts the double LCC (DLCC) structure, which has many capacitor and inductor components. Therefore, it is necessary to optimize the circuit parameters to improve the transmission performance of the system. In this study, the DLCC compensation circuit was modeled and analyzed to lay the foundation for parameter optimization. Secondly, the size parameters of the energy transmitting and receiving coil were determined, and the influence of the change of the primary and secondary compensation inductance on the circuit element stress and output performance was analyzed to determine the optimal compensation inductance value. Thirdly, the realization condition of zero voltage switching (ZVS) was analyzed, the relationship between the input impedance angle of the compensation circuit and the component parameter value was obtained, and a parameter optimization control strategy for realizing ZVS was proposed. Finally, through simulation and experiment, it was concluded that under different power levels, the efficiency of the parameter optimization strategy proposed in this study is as high as 91.86%, increasing by about 1%. Therefore, the research undertaken in this study can promote the development of WPT technology and has certain practical significance.

Polarity Reversal Effect of a Memristor From the Circuit Point of View and Insights Into the Memristor Fuse

As the memristor device is asymmetrical in nature, it is not a bilateral element like the resistor in terms of circuit functionality. Thus, it causes hindrance in some memristor-based applications such as in cellular nonlinear network neighborhood connections and in some application areas where its orientation is essentially expected to act as a bilateral circuit element reliable for bidirectional communication, for example, in signal and image processing or in electrical synapse devices. We introduce a memristor-based network for each purpose where we replace the conventional series resistances by memristors. The memristor asymmetry is described from the circuit point of view allowing us to observe its interaction within the network. Moreover, a memristor fuse is proposed in order to achieve the memristive effect with symmetry, which is formed basically by connecting two memristors antiserially. We, therefore, analyze the memristor fuse from its basic principle along with the theoretical analysis and then observe the response from the circuit point of view.