Rectifying memristor bridge circuit realized with human skin

A memristor (memory resistor) is labelled as the fourth passive electrical circuit element [1] and its resistance may change with an applied electrical voltage or current. It is characterized by its state dependent Ohm’s law and its state equation that describes how the inner state changes with the applied electrical stimulus

Equations (1) and (2) describe a generic memristor which is the second most general memristor type [2] and its memristance, M(x), (in analogy to resistance) depends on x, a vector of state variables. In analogy to the conductance of a resistor, a memristor can also be described by its memductance, G(x), (state dependent conductance). However, any memristor exhibits a pinched hysteresis loop in the voltage current plot (V-I plot) with pinched point position in the origin of coordinates (“fingerprint” of a memristor [3]). The branches of the loop can either cross the pinched point with different slopes (transversal memristor) or touch it with equal slopes (tangential memristor). A first realization of a memristor was presented in 2008 [4], which was based on titanium dioxide. Memristors based on other materials like tantalum oxide [5, 6], zinc oxide [7] or biological memristors such as the Venus flytrap [8] and slime mold memristors [9] have been demonstrated, as well. Other research is focused on implementation of memristors in electrical circuits that are used for neuromorphic computing [10, 11, 12] or emulating arithmetic operations [13, 14], as some examples.

This paper focuses on a 4-memristor bridge circuit (similar to a Wheatstone bridge but based on transversal memristor models instead of resistors, see Fig. 1a) that was used for synaptic weight programming in [15]. The same circuit was used for the generation of nth-order harmonics and frequency doubling in [16] and as full-wave rectifier in [17]. Here this circuit (in a two memristor configuration, see [17] and Fig. 1b) is realized with human skin (see Fig. 1c.) Human skin exhibits non-linear electrical properties if the applied stimulus is large enough [18, 19, 20]. It was concluded that the sweat ducts in human skin can be modelled as a memristor [21]. As it was shown later, human skin actually contains two different memristor types, one based on electro-osmosis within the sweat ducts and one based on thermal changes within the stratum corneum [22]. Both are electrically in parallel to each other and the sweat duct memristor usually dominates the measurement as long as the galvanic contact through the sweat ducts is given. The memductance of the sweat duct memristor increases or decreases, dependent on the sign of the applied voltage (or current) and the corresponding pinched hysteresis loop in the V-I plot is transversal [22]. The stratum corneum memristor experiences a memductance increase independent of the sign of the applied voltage and its pinched hysteresis loop is tangential [22]. The functioning of the here implemented memristor bridge depends on the physical conditions of the skin. If the galvanic contact through the sweat ducts is given under both corresponding electrodes (CC1 and CC2, see Fig. 1c), similar functioning as in [15, 16, 17] may be archived by the implemented circuit.

Fig. 1

Measurements were done on 28 test subjects with constant amplitude (+1 V and – 1 V) sinusoidal voltages of different very low frequencies that were applied via surface electrodes (see Fig. 1c.) The currents recorded from some subjects were (more or less) half-wave rectified and for some other subjects the obtained currents had double the frequency as the applied voltages. A parameter that reflects the amount of rectification is introduced and used for quantitative analysis. The recordings here are affected by the applied voltage itself and can consequently be seen as non-linear electrical measurements (on human skin) [22]. Furthermore, these can be seen as part of Bioimpedance, since this field encompasses the passive electrical properties (memristor = fourth passive electrical circuit element) of organic tissues and corresponding recording techniques [23].

The results depend on the initial conditions of the skin and may be categorized into three groups.

Currents that are (more or less) half wave rectified

The measured currents of some other subjects are more or less half wave rectified (Fig. 2b.) If the galvanic contacts through the sweat ducts under both, the CC1 and CC2 electrodes, are achieved but one of both sweat duct memristors has a much lower initial memductance, a corresponding current like the one recorded from subject D (Fig. 2b, top) may be observed. In this example, the skin memristor under CC1 initially presented a much lower memductance than that under CC2. The memductance under CC2 decreases in the second half of the period, while that under CC1 increases, but both end up at similar states. The resulting current is almost zero, since it is the sum of a negative current and a positive current of almost the same magnitude.

Subject B (see Fig. 2b middle plot) represents a case of half wave rectification under different conditions than subject D. The CC1 electrode was attached to the earlobe of Subject B (Variant A, see Fig. 1c) and it is known from the data in [22] that the skin under CC2 of subject B reflects the sweat duct memristor (pinched hysteresis loop with one pinched point, see Fig. 2c in [22]) while the skin under CC1 reflects the stratum corneum memristor (hysteresis loop with two pinched points, see Fig. S1 here). However, the memductances of both are within the same magnitude (maximum current of about 5 μA at 1.2 V amplitude for both). In this example, the applied voltages will cause a memductance decrease under CC2 (sweat duct memristor) and a memductance increase under CC1 (stratum corneum memristor) within the first half of the period and the negative current through the skin under CC1 will dominate the measurement after a while. In the second half of the period, the memductances of both skin sites (under CC1 and CC2) will increase (since the stratum corneum memristor exhibits a memductance increase independent of the polarity of the applied voltage) and the currents though both skin sites will more or less cancel each other out. Similar results were achieved for the same subject also at 0.05 Hz (Fig. 2b bottom). A more detailed description that account for the oscillations in this specific example is given in the supplementary information.

Fig. 3

Fig. S1

It is possible to rectify (more or less) electrical current with human skin. The adverbs “more or less” take into account that the obtained currents are not perfectly rectified as it would have been with a diode bridge. The sinusoidal

waveform is distorted since the recordings here are nonlinear (see also [22]). The rectification (if it occurs) is based on the state changes of two memristors; if the skin under one electrode dominates the measurement (high memductance) during one half of the period and if the skin of the other electrode will become dominant after a while in the other half of the period, the current will be more or less full wave rectified. The state change of the sweat duct memristor is based on ion movements and takes time (as it does for memristors in general). There is always a delay until the other memristor will become dominant (and the polarity of the current switches) after the polarities of the voltages have switched. The lower the frequency of the voltages the more time remains for the state changes to happen and the more rectified the current becomes. With higher frequencies less subjects exhibited rectified currents and the amount of rectification decreases (see Fig. 3). In general, as the frequency increases, the current becomes more linear. The electrical response of the skin at the forehead, for example, is likely to be completely linear when a sinusoidal voltage with 1 V amplitude and frequencies above 2 Hz is applied (see range of linear vs. non-linear measurements in Fig. 3 of [22]).

The classification whether the current was full wave rectified, half wave rectified or none of both was done by optical inspection of the current over time. The functioning of the overall circuit can also be distinguished by the corresponding voltage-current plots (see Fig. S2 in the supplementary information). A more qualitative measure was introduced by, r_rec, the ratio of rectification. This measure is with respect to a full wave rectified sinusoidal signal and can be used as a rough reference.

Fig. S2

Based on the results here, it may be useful to classify currents that have r_rec values larger than 50% as (more or less) full wave rectified. If the r_rec value is between 20% and 50% the current may be classified as half wave rectified and below 20% as non-rectified. However, these are just orientation values. The currents obtained from two subjects that were not considered as rectified (by optical inspection) resulted in r_rec larger than 20% (21.6% and 22.4%, respectively). The currents were quite asymmetric with large area under the x-axis during one half of the period and with smaller but still noticeably large area above the x-axis during the other half of the period. It depends on the application whether the currents in these two examples should be classified as half wave rectified or not.

The existence of the sweat duct memristor (and the stratum corneum memristor) [22] has been demonstrated at the forehead and the earlobe. However, the galvanic contact through the sweat ducts was achieved from more subjects at the forehead than the earlobe (25 out of 28 subjects vs. 9 out of 28 subjects, see [22]). Since only 5 out 12 subjects obtained either frequency doubling or half wave rectification when the electrode at the earlobe was used as CC1, another setup was used for the remaining 16 subjects in which CC1 was placed at the forehead close to CC2 (placed at the same time, see Fig. 1). However, also only 6 out of 16 subjects exhibited a rectified current in this setup. Since galvanic contact through the sweat ducts was usually obtained at the forehead under CC2 (see [22]) one could have expected similar conditions for the skin under CC1 in this setup (variant B) and consequently more subjects that exhibit rectified currents. However, each non-linear electrical measurement on human skin will also affect follow up measurements. Non-linear measurements were conducted at the skin under CC2 (experiment 1 presented in [22] and experiment 2 in which DC pulses were applied, unpublished results) before this experiment started but not at the skin at the forehead under CC1. The memductance of the sweat duct memristor under CC2 increased with the before conducted experiments since sweat was pulled towards the skin surface which provided better current pathways. As a consequence, the initial memductance of the skin under CC2 was higher than that under CC1 for many subjects and if changes happened slowly, CC2 was dominating the measurements in both halves of the periods of the voltage (non-linear but non-rectified current). It was tried to reset the different initial conditions and to ensure galvanic contact through the sweat ducts by adding the one minute of workout at the stationary bike before the experiment started. It was shown that the non-linear electrical properties of human skin can change significantly before and after workout (see [24]). However, one minute on the stationary bike was very likely too short to cause any thermal sweating. If one repeats the experiment here with both electrodes at the forehead but without non-linear electrical measurements on only one of both electrodes before, one may obtain rectified currents from more subjects. Chances to obtain rectified currents are even higher if a workout that actually causes thermal sweating is included in the protocol.

The implemented memristor bridge can be seen as one application of the non-linear electrical properties of human skin and as part of non-linear electrical measurements in general. The functioning of the circuit (frequency doubling, full wave rectification, half wave rectification or none of these) depends on the conditions of the corresponding human skin memristors. The measurements will reveal how the physiological conditions of one skin site are in comparison to another skin site. Furthermore, since the half wave or full wave rectification only works under certain conditions, the memristor bridge circuit may be used in authentication systems. For example, one skin memristor may be replaced by an external reference memristor and access is only granted if the overall current is rectified. Other functions of the memristor bridge in general (like the generation of pulses that had similar shapes as neuronal pulses in [17] or synaptic weight programming in [15]) may be implemented with human skin, as well. However, as demonstrated here, it is in principle possible to realize a memristor circuit with human skin and further applications may be found later.