In a quest to make to make the World’s smallest radio, researchers in California report development of the world’s first working radio system that receives radio waves wirelessly and converts them to sound signals through a nano-sized detector made of carbon nanotubes.
The ‘carbon nanotube radio’ device is thousands times smaller than the diameter of a human hair! The development marks an important step in the evolution of nano-electronics and could lead to the production of the world’s smallest radio.
Peter Burke and Chris Rutherglen developed a carbon nanotube ‘demodulator’ that is capable of translating AM radio waves into sound. In a laboratory demonstration, the researchers incorporated the detector into a complete radio system and used it to successfully transmit classical music wirelessly from an iPod to a speaker several feet away from the music player.
Carbon nanotubes have been employed for a variety of uses including composite materials, bio-sensors, nano-electronic circuits and membranes. While they have proven useful for these purposes, no one really knows much about what’s going on at the molecular level. For example, how do nanotubes and chemical functional groups interact with each other on the atomic scale? Answering this question could lead to improvements in future nano devices.
Via: Physorg
