Back-gated silicon-on-insulator MOSFET -a threshold-voltage adjustable device-employs a constant back-gate potential to terminate source-drain electric fields and to provide carrier confinement in the channel. This suppresses shortchannel effects of nano-scale and of high drain biases, while allowing a means to threshold voltage control. We report here a theoretical analysis of this geometry to identify its natural length scales, and correlate the theoretical results with experimental device measurements. We also analyze experimental electrical characteristics for misaligned back-gate geometries to evaluate the influence on transport behavior from the device electrostatics due to the structure and position of the back-gate. The backgate structure also operates as a floating-gate nonvolatile memory (NVRAM) when the back-gate is floating. We summarize experimental and theoretical results that show the nano-scale scaling advantages of this structure over the traditional front floating-gate NVRAM.