Memcapacitors and Meminductors are Overunity Systems!

TL;DR

The paper proves that ideal memcapacitors and meminductors can theoretically produce more energy than supplied, classifying them as overunity systems, which challenges their physical plausibility.

Contribution

It provides a rigorous proof that ideal memcapacitors and meminductors are overunity systems, contradicting their assumed passivity and physical realizability.

Findings

Ideal memcapacitors and meminductors are not passive devices.

They can theoretically produce more energy than supplied.

An illustrative mechanical analogue confirms this property.

Abstract

It is rigorously proved that ideal memcapacitors and meminductors are not passive or lossless devices, nor are they satisfying the weaker notion of cyclo-passivity, which arises when dropping the requirement of non-negativity of the storage function. Equivalently, this implies that there exist excitation profiles that allow to extract more energy from the device than it is supplied with; so that their energy conversion efficiency exceeds 100%. This means that ideal memcapacitors and meminductors constitute so-called overunity systems. An illustrative mechanical analogue is provided that explicitly confirms this property. Hence, the question arises if ideal memcapacitors and meminductors will just remain some mathematical toys or artefacts.