The researchers tested the receiver on a "commercially relevant" band of frequencies and found successful music and voice reception. The test successfully included both FM and AM signals. The single carbon nanotube is placed in a circuit and becomes "like a tiny cat whisker" - sensitive to extremely small electromagnetic vibrations - and receives the radio signal. Radios normally have four distinct components (antenna, tunable band-pass filter, amplifier, and demodulator), but in this design the nanotube performs all of these functions.
One of the driving goals of nanotechnology is the ability to create tiny robots which can manipulate matter at the atomic scale, doing such tasks as cleaning plaque out of a person's blood vessels or breaking down pollutants when a factory is demolished. One problem I have always had with such grandiose visions is understanding how such machines could possibly be controlled. (Michael Crichton's novel Prey postulates nanotechnology run amock, if you're interested.) What if you wished to change the instructions? Surely devices so small couldn't receive signals that change their orders.
With further advancements, this could be a major leap in the miniaturization efforts of the communications industry. I, for one, am looking forward to having a cell phone built into a watch ... and with findings like this, it may be a reality sooner than later.
Related Articles:
- NanoLetters - "Nanotube Radio" (abstract available for free, subscription or purchase needed for full article)
- University of California at Berkeley Physics Department - Nanotube Radio: Supplemental Materials
- ScienceDaily.com - "First Fully-functional RadioFrom A Single Carbon Nanotube Created"
- PhysicsOrg.com - "Make Way for the Real Nanopod: Researchers Create First Fully Functional Nanotube Radio"
- EurekaAlert.org - "World's smallest radio uses single nanotube to pick up good vibrations"
- About.com Inventors - The Invention of Radio
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