Intellectual Property Law

US Patent 7763880 - Memristive transistor

The original "memristor" proposed by Leon Chua in 1971 was a 2-terminal device which retained a memory of past currents based on the resistance (i.e. memory resistor). HP researchers received much attention in 2008 for disclosing a nanoscale version of the memristor based on ionic drift in thin film metal oxides. This patent from HP describes a related structure which integrates the memristive structure with a field effect transistor structure. Claim 1 reads:

1. A multi-terminal switch comprising:

a source electrode;

a drain electrode;

a gate electrode; and

an active region comprising at least one primary active region comprising at least one material for transporting and hosting ions that act as dopants to control the flow of electrons through the switch, and a secondary active region comprising at least one material for providing a source/sink of ionic dopants for said at least one primary active region, wherein the source electrode and drain electrode are physically connected to the primary active region and wherein the gate electrode is physically connected to the secondary active region.

Full post as published by TinytechIP on July 28, 2010 (boomark / email).