Memcapacitors and Meminductors are Overunity Systems!

Abstract

It is rigorously proved that ideal memcapacitors and meminductors are not passive or lossless devices, nor are they satisfying the weaker notion of cyclo-passivity, which arises when dropping the requirement of non-negativity of the storage function. Equivalently, this implies that there exist excitation profiles that allow to extract more energy from the device than it is supplied with; so that their energy conversion efficiency exceeds 100%. This means that ideal memcapacitors and meminductors constitute so-called overunity systems. An illustrative mechanical analogue is provided that explicitly confirms this property. Hence, the question arises if ideal memcapacitors and meminductors will just remain some mathematical toys or artefacts.