US Patent 8120071 - Ionic mem-transistor

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/8120071.html

This patent from HP applies Leon Chua's concept of memristive systems in the development of a new type of field effect transistor. Some earlier concepts related to memtransistors (i.e. memory transistors) were discussed by Bernard Widrow in the 1960's in terms of a memistor and in a presentation I gave in an IEEE meeting back in 2010 (B.Mouttet, "Memristive systems analysis of 3-terminal devices," ICECS 2010, link). Claim 1 reads:

1. A non-volatile field-effect device, comprising:

a source;

a drain;

a channel-formation portion disposed between and coupled with said source and said drain; and

a memristive gate disposed over said channel-formation portion and coupled with said channel-formation portion;

wherein said memristive gate comprises a plurality of mobile ions and a confinement structure for said plurality of mobile ions; and

said memristive gate is configured to switch said channel-formation portion from a first conductivity state to a second conductivity state in response to migration of said plurality of mobile ions within said confinement structure.