Microwave memristive-like nonlinearity in a dielectric metamaterial

Memristor exhibit interesting and valuable circuit properties and have thus become the subject of increasing scientific interest. Scientists wonder if they can conceive a microwave memristor that behaves as a memristor operating with electromagnetic fields. Here, we report a microwave memristive-like nonlinear phenomenon at room temperature in dielectric metamaterials consisting of CaTiO3-ZrO2 ceramic dielectric cubes. Hysteretic transmission-incident field power loops (similar to the hysteretic I-V loop of memristor which is the fingerprint of memristor) with various characteristics were systematically observed in the metamaterials, which exhibited designable microwave memristive-like behavior. The effect is attributed to the decreasing permittivity of the dielectric cubes with the increasing temperature generated by the interaction between the electromagnetic waves and the dielectric cubes. This work demonstrates the feasibility of fabrication transient photonic memristor at microwave frequencies with metamaterials.