The paper deals with the effect of magnetic fields on the I-V characteristics of an IHC45 varistor. It is found that: (a) the nonlinear I-V characteristics of the varistor can be tuned by a magnetic field resulting in enhanced device performance; and (b) the contributions of a magnetic field on the output signal show all the characteristics of a typical transistor. The potential applications of these devices could be magnetically controlled voltage amplifiers, magnetically controlled current amplifiers, sensors, memory elements, microphone pickup with integrated pre-amplifier using a single transistor, and high temperature electronics.
