To Vacuume or Not to Vacuume.
First came crystals to aid in rectification.
Then came vaccume tubes
War showed valves to be slow and were replaced by solid state.
Now in 2014
Vacuume x Mosfet = transistor to operate in the THz range :o
(Edit is it Vacuum or Vaccume? )
Its latin: vacu + um = vacuum (neuter version of vacuus). We get vacant, vacuous, vacate, vacation from the same latin stem.
These new transistors will be only of specialised utility in the THz range
I suspect, just like GaAs devices are now.
cjdelphi:
Introducing the Vacuum Transistor: A Device Made of Nothing - IEEE SpectrumTo Vacuume or Not to Vacuume.
First came crystals to aid in rectification.
Then came vaccume tubes
War showed valves to be slow and were replaced by solid state.Now in 2014
Vacuume x Mosfet = transistor to operate in the THz range :o
(Edit is it Vacuum or Vaccume? )
It's not a vacuum, as it's filled with Helium at 1 Atm (14 PSI). But will we have to keep them in upturned boxes or scrape them off the ceiling. 
Neat! I remember these being worked on many years ago (decades?) but larger, and so requiring an actual vacuum. These just put the points so close together that electrons emitted are unlikely to hit a gas molecule, and the voltage is low enough that if they do, there isn't sufficient energy to create an ion.