Memristor-capacitor based startup circuit for voltage reference generators

This paper presents the design of Memristor-capacitor based startup circuit. Memristor is a novel device and has many advantages over conventional CMOS devices such as no leakage current and is easy to manufacture. In this work the switching characteristics of memristor is utilized. First the theoretical equations describing the switching behavior of memristor are derived. To prove the switching capabilities of Memristor, a startup circuit based on series combination of Memristor-capacitor is proposed. This circuit is compared with the reference circuit (which utilizes resistor in place of memristor) and the previously reported MOSFET based startup circuits. Comparison of different circuits was done to validate the results. Simulation results shows that memristor based circuit attains on (I = 2.25 mA) to off state (I = 10 μA) in 2.8 ns while the MOSFET based startup circuits takes (I = 1 mA) to off state (I = 10 μA) in 55.56 ns. However no significant difference in switching time was observed when compared with resistance based startup circuit. The benefit comes in terms of area because much larger die area is required for manufacturing of resistance in comparison to fabrication of memristor.