US scientists at the University of California have unveiled a detector thousands of times smaller than the diameter of a human hair that can translate radio waves into sound, marking the first time that a nano-sized detector has been demonstrated in a working radio system. Made of carbon nanotubes a few atoms across, it is almost 1,000 times smaller than current radio technology.
Many companies are interested in the long-term potential of carbon nanotubes - tiny cylinders of carbon that measure just a few billionths of a metre across. Peter Burke and Chris Rutherglen incorporated the microscopic detector into a complete radio system and used it to transmit classical music wirelessly from an iPod to a speaker several metres away. Full details of their findings will be published next month in the American Chemical Society"s Nano Letters.