Scientists Discovered a New Circuit Element: a 'Meminductor'
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Scientists have discovered a new component of circuitry.
For centuries, we thought circuits only had three basic parts: inductors, capacitors, and resistors. But over the last 20 years, scientists have discovered “memory” versions of capacitors and resistors—memcapacitors and memrisitors.
Recently, a team of experts discovered yet another circuitry element—the meminductor. These “mem” versions can remember their properties even after powering down.
Circuits are borderline omnipresent. They're also nothing new. Electrical circuitry allows us to power everything from our cars, to our computers, to the lights in our homes. And the first simple circuit was created in 1800.
In the over 200 years since the first circuit was created, circuits didn’t change much on a fundamental level. Each one was a combination of three elements: inductors (which store energy in a magnetic field), capacitors (which stores energy in an electric field), and resistors (which restrict the flow of electricity).
But in 2008, that changed pretty dramatically with the invention of the memristor, a resistor that can remember—hence the “mem” prefix—their assigned properties even after the circuit has been switched off and back on. The discovery of the memcapacitor followed 11 years later.
And recently, a team from Texas A&M has announced the discovery of another new circuit element—the meminductor. “Those two discoveries set the world a little bit on its head as far as electrical engineering,” H. Rusty Harris, one of the researchers that discovered this new component, said in a press release:
“All of the 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.”
To find this sought-after element, the team set up a circuit comprised mainly of an electromagnet and two permanent magnets to take a look at the density and strength of a magnetic field flowing through an inductor. Using this technique, the researchers were able to uncover a particular “mem” signature inside the inductor which, according to a news release, led to the inductor’s “mem- state, or memory-like nature, by the same definition that the memristor and memcapacitor were realized.”
This discovery rounds out the expected series of the “mem” versions of standard circuit elements. But right now, the element isn't a pure meminductor in and of itself—it's a regular inductor that is expressing meminductor behavior.
In the future, the team hopes to improve upon their finding, and eventually produce a meminductor that functions more purely as a meminductor. According to their paper, they believe this could be done at extremely low temperatures.
But for now, the team is happy with their results, and their process. "New discovery is very exciting," Harris said in a press release. "And the student-professor interaction on this project was beautiful."
Even in the 200-year-old world of circuitry, it appears we still have something to learn.
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