ability to change conductivity with the amount of applied voltage can be used for amplifying or switching electronic signals. The term metal-insulator-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MISFET) is almost synonymous with MOSFET. Another near-synonym is insulated-gate field-effect transistor (IGFET).

Physicist Julius Edgar Lilienfeld first proposed the concept of a field-effect transistor (FET) in 1925, but it was not possible to construct a working device