Collective electrical response of simulated memristive arrays using SPICE

TL;DR

This study investigates how simulated memristive arrays respond electrically when assembled in organized and distorted configurations, revealing complexity and sensitivity to distortions that impact their potential for technological applications.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the collective electrical behavior of memristive arrays, especially under geometrical distortions, highlighting their complexity and phenomenology.

Findings

Highly idealized arrays show inherent complexity.

Simple distortions significantly affect resistance states.

Collective response combines individual model features with unique phenomena.

Abstract

Self-assembled structures are possible solutions to the problem of increasing the density and connectivity of memristive units in massive arrays. Although they would allow surpassing the limit imposed by the lithographic feature size, the spontaneous formation of highly interconnected networks poses a new challenge: how to characterize and control the obtained assemblies. In view of a flourishing field of such experimental realizations, this study explores the collective electrical response of simulated memristive units when assembled in geometrically organized and progressively distorted configurations. We show that highly idealized memristive arrays already display a degree of complexity that needs to be taken into account when characterizing self-assemblies to be technologically exploited. Moreover, the introduction of simple distortions has a considerable impact on the available resistance states and their evolution upon cycling. Considering arrays of a limited size, we also demonstrate that the collective response resembles aspects of the individual model while also revealing its own phenomenology.