Chua’s Circuit With Tunable Nonlinearity Based on a Nonvolatile Memristor: Design and Realization

Nonvolatile memristive devices display nonlinear characteristics suitable for implementing circuits exhibiting oscillations or more complex dynamic behaviors, including chaos. However, the results presented in related works are mostly limited to simulations and employing ideal memristor models whose resistance is governed by a charge-flux relation that is not connected to real devices, thus hindering the realization of such nonlinear oscillators. In this work, we present the framework for the physical implementation of a tunable memristor Chua’s circuit, which is based on a nonvolatile memristive device that provides the nonlinear conductance required by the circuit and the possibility to tune it for the purpose of selecting among different oscillation patterns. We first establish design guidelines to guarantee complex oscillations in the tunable memristor Chua’s circuit. Further, we physically implement the circuit after characterizing and modeling the tunable current-voltage characteristic of a real device. Our circuit successfully generates different oscillation patterns just by programming the nonvolatile memristive device to different states. The devised design guidelines and device modeling were used to extend the experimental work and draw further requirements for device properties for a successful circuit implementation.