Post by whiterose on Nov 3, 2007 15:53:47 GMT -5
Berkeley Physicists Make a Radio 10,000 Times Thinner Than a Human Hair
2007 11 03
By Bernadette Tansey | sfgate.com
Image not correctly scaled
Physicists at UC Berkeley say they have produced the world's smallest radio out of a single carbon nanotube that is 10,000 times thinner than a human hair.
Professor Alex Zettl led a team that developed the minuscule filament, which can be tuned to receive AM or FM transmissions.
The first song it played? "Layla" by Derek & the Dominos. Eric Clapton's unmistakable guitar riff can be heard on a scratchy recording of the nanoradio's output posted by Zettl online.
<< Listen to the 'Layla' recording Courtesy Zettl Research Group, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and University of California at Berkeley >>
Zettl said the device, built by graduate student Kenneth Jensen, is the first radio within the size range of nanotechnology, which covers inventions no larger than 100 billionths of a meter. The nanoradio is 100 billion times smaller than the first commercial radios of the early 20th century. It is a thousand times smaller than the most minute radios in use today, which are based on silicon chip technology.
The research team has no commercial partners yet, but Zettl said the practical applications of the nanoradio could include cell phones, climate-monitoring systems and radio-controlled diagnostic probes that could move through the human bloodstream.
"Maybe the kids will be wearing these instead of iPods, inside their ears," Zettl said.
As long as 10 years ago, scientists had managed to build individual components of a radio on the nanoscale, he said. But Zettl and his colleagues figured out how to make a single nanotube perform all the functions of a radio: It serves as an antenna, tuner, amplifier and demodulator. The demodulator eliminates any frequencies from a radio transmission except the signal to be played, such as a song.
"I hate to sound like I'm selling a Ginsu knife - 'But wait, there's more! It also slices and dices!' - but this one nanotube does everything," Zettl said.
The key to this feat was making the nanoradio work differently from conventional radio electronics. The first step in that old technology is to convert radio waves into pulses of electronic current. By contrast, the nanotube absorbs the radio transmission and physically vibrates in----
more at: www.redicecreations.com/
This post is dedicated to Karen Stern as she so loved music.
2007 11 03
By Bernadette Tansey | sfgate.com
Image not correctly scaled
Physicists at UC Berkeley say they have produced the world's smallest radio out of a single carbon nanotube that is 10,000 times thinner than a human hair.
Professor Alex Zettl led a team that developed the minuscule filament, which can be tuned to receive AM or FM transmissions.
The first song it played? "Layla" by Derek & the Dominos. Eric Clapton's unmistakable guitar riff can be heard on a scratchy recording of the nanoradio's output posted by Zettl online.
<< Listen to the 'Layla' recording Courtesy Zettl Research Group, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and University of California at Berkeley >>
Zettl said the device, built by graduate student Kenneth Jensen, is the first radio within the size range of nanotechnology, which covers inventions no larger than 100 billionths of a meter. The nanoradio is 100 billion times smaller than the first commercial radios of the early 20th century. It is a thousand times smaller than the most minute radios in use today, which are based on silicon chip technology.
The research team has no commercial partners yet, but Zettl said the practical applications of the nanoradio could include cell phones, climate-monitoring systems and radio-controlled diagnostic probes that could move through the human bloodstream.
"Maybe the kids will be wearing these instead of iPods, inside their ears," Zettl said.
As long as 10 years ago, scientists had managed to build individual components of a radio on the nanoscale, he said. But Zettl and his colleagues figured out how to make a single nanotube perform all the functions of a radio: It serves as an antenna, tuner, amplifier and demodulator. The demodulator eliminates any frequencies from a radio transmission except the signal to be played, such as a song.
"I hate to sound like I'm selling a Ginsu knife - 'But wait, there's more! It also slices and dices!' - but this one nanotube does everything," Zettl said.
The key to this feat was making the nanoradio work differently from conventional radio electronics. The first step in that old technology is to convert radio waves into pulses of electronic current. By contrast, the nanotube absorbs the radio transmission and physically vibrates in----
more at: www.redicecreations.com/
This post is dedicated to Karen Stern as she so loved music.