Physical implementation of cobalt ferrite memristor in Chua's circuit for chaotic encryption

Abstract

Memory resistor, or memristor, has been realized as a discrete electronic device and has a perspective application in the field of cryptography. The physical implementation of the memristor in chaotic circuits has been scarcely explored. In this paper, a memristor is fabricated by spin-coating a cobalt ferrite precursor on a processed silicon and is then electro-sputtered with silver to act as the anode with the base silicon as the cathode. This fabrication process has a scalability potential in conjunction with integrated circuit fabrication techniques and complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technologies. The fabricated cobalt ferrite memristor has shown a ratio between the on and off resistance of >1000 and has been implemented in a chaotic Chua's circuit, making it one of few physical implementations of a physical memristor in a physical circuit. The analysis and characterization of this circuit using bifurcation diagrams and Lyapunov exponent prove the chaotic behavior of a real Chua's circuit. This chaotic behavior can be useful in chaotic cryptography as nonperiodic oscillations can be leveraged to make sensitive information more difficult to interpret by bad actors.