Universities should be inspiring places. From the autumn intake of excited new undergraduates to the seasoned academics pushing at the boundaries of knowledge, the sense of discovery that courses through a good university is a stirring and palpable force.

Nowhere is this more tangible than in the fields of technological innovation. Giving talented people the opportunity to turn a good idea into an application that makes an actual difference to people’s lives is one of the most important things a university can do.

With its long history in the sciences and engineering, Surrey has an enviable track record of doing just that. And it could be on the verge of repeating the trick with a new kind of transistor invented at the University’s Advanced Technology Institute (ATI), part of the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences.

Transistors are one of the most successful and important inventions in history. These tiny semiconductor devices are the basic building block of electronics, with trillions of examples quietly ticking away all around us.

In things like display screens, normal transistors are made on glass panels from a semiconductor called polycrystalline silicon, or simply polysilicon. Polysilicon transistors are fine for some applications, and can be produced cheaply in huge numbers, but they have some limitations.

A group of academics at Surrey think there are improvements to be made. In fact, they have reinvented the transistor completely. The result is a nifty little device called the Source-Gated Transistor (SGT).

 To see the full version of this interview with Radu please click here.

The magazine also features articles on research conducted by other ATI researchers as follows:

A New Spin on Electronics - Juerong Li

Smallest Chemistry Set - Dr Hidetsugu Shiozawa

Surrey Names Researchers of the Year - Kosmas Tsakmakidis

Surrey PhD Student SET for Bright Future - Robert Topley