Researchers Discover New Circuit Element

The research team published their new circuit element discovery in the February issue of the journal Scientific Reports.

Physical evidence of meminductance proven

Dr. H. Rusty Harris, an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas A&M University, has discovered a novel circuit element referred to as a meminductor.

A circuit element refers to an electrical component utilized to regulate and guide the flow of electricity within an electrical circuit. The traditional three circuit elements are the resistor, capacitor, and inductor. Recently, within the past 15 years, two additional circuit elements, the memristor, and the memcapacitor, have been discovered. These newer circuit components are referred to as the “mem-” versions of their classical counterparts and exhibit unique current and voltage properties that depend on previous values of current or voltage in time, acting like a memory.

“Those two discoveries set the world a little bit on its head as far as electrical engineering,” Harris said. “All of a sudden, we thought we had three, but now we found these two others. And so that led us to think, ‘OK, there’s got to be more then, but how do we understand what they are? How do we map all of these things relative to each other?’ And it turns out, there is a relationship between each of the resistors and its family and each of the capacitors and its family.”

Harris and his student created a two-terminal passive system — comprised primarily of an electromagnet interacting with a pair of permanent magnets — to examine the magnetic flux density and magnetizing field strength of the inductor circuit element. With the help of this tool, Harris was able to prove the existence of the pinched hysteresis curve within the inductor leading to its mem- state, or memory-like nature, by the same definition that the memristor and memcapacitor were realized.

The researchers published their findings in the February issue of the journal Scientific Reports, which is the fifth most-cited journal in the world and is in the Nature portfolio.

“New discovery is very exciting,” Harris said. “And the student-professor interaction on this project was beautiful. During our brainstorming sessions, we fed off each other — I learned new things based on my discussion with him and he learned new things based on my experience.”

Reference: “Physical evidence of meminductance in a passive, two-terminal circuit element” by Abhiram Dinavahi, Alexandre Yamamoto, and H. Rusty Harris, 1 February 2023, Scientific Reports.
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-24914-y