From my background in EE, I can tell you a bit about the why at least. While I have some background in device physics, it's as an EE not as a physicist, so I pr

From my background in EE, I can tell you a bit about the why at least. While I have some background in device physics, it's as an EE not as a physicist, so I probably won't be as helpful on the how. - For analog type devices, negative resistance gives you a way to easily make oscillators, and negative feedback loops. Practical applications could be things like smaller or lower power wireless chips, or more accurate filters / oscillators in those chips. Useful for everything from wireless chipsets to things like google's project soli. - For digital type devices, the big draw is that you can make a memory cell (aka flip-flop) from one active component instead of 2. This could potentially halve the size of some of the digital logic in your microprocessor (at least the registers and all the temporary storage used in your processing pipelines!) - Talking more pie-in-the-sky, some models of neurons include negative resistance areas...analog neural nets on a chip using these will probably support a grad student or two as a research project! Start reading here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_resistance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_resistance