New transistor design, can be P or N:

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-12-universal-transistor-basis-logic-function.html

Regular transistors are either P or N type depending on the doping inside but this design allows a voltage to flip it from either P to N or N to P. A significant development.

Originally posted by sonhouse
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-12-universal-transistor-basis-logic-function.html

Regular transistors are either P or N type depending on the doping inside but this design allows a voltage to flip it from either P to N or N to P. A significant development.

How will this change the electronics of today?

Faster? Smaller? Less demanding of energy?

Originally posted by FabianFnas
How will this change the electronics of today?

Faster? Smaller? Less demanding of energy?

All of the above. They will be faster because the parts will be closer together with the same size die (minimum size features vs minimum spacing of lines), less energy consumption per million parts or whatever.

Cheaper to make because the reprogrammability on the fly of being able to choose whether it conducts with electrons or holes will allow the same transistor to take part in several circuits so less transistors will be needed to do a given electronic job like Nand gates, shift registers and so forth.

Now these things are based on having an NPN in series with a PNP transistor but if either can be both, it allows software to decide the configuration of a given set of transistors. This is like the old idea of 'Field programmable gate arrays' but on a much more fundamental level.