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Berkeley researchers develop world’s smallest radio

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Move over, UC Irvine: your colleagues across the state at UC Berkeley have just one-upped your nano-scale radio by not only using nanotechnology for the demodulator, but actually “stuffing” all the components into a single carbon nanotube. By utilizing mechanical — rather than electrical — vibrations of a nanotube protruding from an electrode, the team from Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory were able to mimic the tuner, antenna, amplifier, and demodulator which compose traditional radios. Their prototype nano-radio, 10,000 times thinner than a human hair, has already been used to broadcast and receive such classic tunes as Good Vibrations by the Beach Boys and Eric Clapton’s Layla; a video of this latter transmission, whose poor quality will make you long for the relative clarity of AM radio, is available after the break…

[Via San Francisco Chronicle, image and video courtesy of Zettl Research Group, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and University of California at Berkeley]

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