Emulating homoeostatic effects with metal-oxide memristors T-dependence

Memristor technologies have been rapidly maturing for the past decade to support the needs of emerging memory, artificial synapses⁠, logic gates⁠ and bio-signal processing⁠ applications. So far, however, most concepts are developed by exploiting the tuneable resistive state of memristors with other physical characteristics being ignored⁠. Here, we report on the thermal properties of metal-oxide memristors and demonstrate how these can be used to emulate a fundamental function of biological neurons: homoeostasis. We show that thermal control mechanisms, frequently dismissed for their generally slow and broad-brush granularity, may in fact be an appropriate approach to emulating similarly slow and broad-brush biological mechanisms due to their extreme simplicity of implementation. We further demonstrate that metal-oxide memristors can be utilised as thermometers and exhibit a programmable temperature sensitivity. This work paves the way towards future systems that employ the rich physical properties of memristors, beyond their electrical state-tuneability, to power a new generation of advanced electronics solutions.