Link: Berkeley researchers use nanotube to build world's tiniest radio.
"November 05, 2007 (Computerworld) – Physicists at the University of California, Berkeley, have built the world's smallest radio out of single carbon nanotube one ten-thousandth the width of a human hair.
"Researchers say the tiny radio needs only a battery and a pair of earphones to hook listeners up with their favorite radio stations. But that's not all the new device could be good for.
"The radio's tiny size could make cell phones more efficient, or it even could be used in radio-controlled devices that flow through the human blood stream, according to a paper written in part by team leader Alex Zettl, a U.C. Berkeley professor of physics. Zettl also noted that he hopes to use the radio to replace cumbersome devices used today to identify atoms or even measure their mass, since the new radio can pick up on atoms jumping on and off the tip of the nanotube.
"We were just in ecstasy when this worked," said Zettl, in a written statement. "It was fantastic." (((Yeah, it's fantastic, all right. And it sure would blow the living daylights out of today's RFID market. It's a literally microscopic radio-frequency device.)))
The device, which researchers are calling the nanoradio, is currently set up to act only as a receiver but could also work as a transmitter. U.C. Berkeley reported that the nanoradio is 100 billion times smaller than the first commercial radios...."
(((No they're not kidding:)))
http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/abstract.cgi/nalefd/asap/abs/nl0721113.html
Nanotube Radio
K. Jensen, J. Weldon, H. Garcia, and A. Zettl*
Department of Physics, Center of Integrated Nanomechanical Systems, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, California 94720, and Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720
Received August 21, 2007
Revised October 2, 2007
Abstract:
"We have constructed a fully functional, fully integrated radio receiver from a single carbon nanotube. The nanotube serves simultaneously as all essential components of a radio: antenna, tunable band-pass filter, amplifier, and demodulator. A direct current voltage source, as supplied by a battery, powers the radio. Using carrier waves in the commercially relevant 40-400 MHz range and both frequency and amplitude modulation techniques, we demonstrate successful music and voice reception."
