What Is the Dynamic Capacitance of a Memristor?

Abstract

Impedance spectroscopy of memristors, nanofluidic channels and halide perovskite devices often shows a low-frequency capacitance that is orders of magnitude larger than any plausible stored charge, or that becomes negative and appears together with an inductive loop. We distinguish two kinds of capacitance that enter the impedance in the same way: a storage capacitance, the derivative of a stored charge, and a dynamic capacitance, produced by the delayed response of a conduction current. Using the conductance-activated quasi-linear memristor (CALM) model, and a general memristor in which an internal state controls the conductance, we show that the dynamic capacitance is the time integral of the transient differential conductance after a small voltage step, measured from its final value. For a single relaxing state it is the product of a relaxing conductance and a relaxation time, with a negative sign. It vanishes at zero bias, and its sign is set by whether the stationary conductance increases or decreases with the magnitude of the voltage. Potentiation gives a negative capacitance and a chemical inductor, and depression gives a positive capacitance that is easily mistaken for stored charge. The analysis gives an explicit formulation of the time-domain criterion for negative capacitance of Jonscher and Ershov. In conical multipore nanofluidic membranes, the dynamic capacitance obtained from impedance and from voltage pulses shows the same sign change at zero bias and reaches values several hundred times larger than the membrane capacitance. The same picture accounts for the capacitive and inductive regimes of halide perovskite memristors.