A New Perspective towards the Understanding of the Frequency-Dependent Behavior of Memristive Devices

As theoretically predicted by Prof. Chua, the input signal frequency has a major impact on the electrical behavior of memristors. According with one of the so-called fingerprints of such devices, the resistive window, i.e. the difference between the low and high resistance states, shrinks as the frequency increases. Physically, this effect stems from the incapability of ions/vacancies to follow the external electrical stimulus. In terms of the electrical behavior, the collapse of the resistive window can be ascribed to the shift of the set and reset voltages toward higher values. In addition, for a fixed frequency, the resistive window increases with the signal amplitude. In this letter, we show that both phenomena, decrease and increase of the resistive window, can be consistently explained after considering the snapback effect and a balance model equation for the memory state of the device.