The REAL Nanopod: Berkeley's Record Breaking Micro Radio

A team of researchers at the University of California at Berkeley have created the first fully functional radio from a single carbon nanotube, which makes it by several orders of magnitude the smallest radio ever made. They're jokingly referring to is as "the real nanopod", which will now hold a spot in the Guinness World Records for world's smallest audio device.

This QuickTime video was recorded on the nanotube radio using a Transmission Electron Microscope. At the beginning of the video, the nanotube radio is tuned to a different frequency than that of the transmitted radio signal so the nanotube does not vibrate and only static noise can be heard. As the radio is brought into tune with the transmitted signal, the nanotube begins to vibrate, which blurs its image in the video but allows the music to become audible. The song is the theme music to Star Wars by John Williams.

"A single carbon nanotube molecule serves simultaneously as all essential components of a radio — antenna, tunable band-pass filter, amplifier, and demodulator," said physicist Alex Zettl, who led the invention of the nanotube radio. "Using carrier waves in the commercially relevant 40-400 MHz range and both frequency and amplitude modulation (FM and AM), we were able to demonstrate successful music and voice reception."

Given that the nanotube radio essentially assembles itself and can be easily tuned to a desired frequency band after fabrication, Zettl believes that nanoradios will be relatively easy to mass-produce. Potential applications, in addition to incredibly tiny radio receivers, include a new generation of wireless communication devices and monitors. Nanotube radio technology could prove especially valuable for biological and medical applications.

"The entire radio would easily fit inside a living cell, and this small size allows it to safely interact with biological systems," Zettl said. "One can envision interfaces with brain or muscle functions, or radio-controlled devices moving through the bloodstream."

It is also possible that the nanotube radio could be implanted in the inner ear as an entirely new and discrete way of transmitting information. Even James Bond would have to be impressed with that spy trick.

Zettl holds joint appointments with Berkeley Lab's Materials Sciences Division (MSD) and the UC Berkeley Physics Department where he is the director of the Center of Integrated Nanomechanical Systems. In recent years, he and his research group have created an astonishing array of devices out of carbon nanotubes - hollow tubular macromolecules only a few nanometers (billionths of a meter) in diameter and typically less than a micron in length ? including sensors, diodes and even a motor. The nanotube radio, however, is the first that ? literally ? rocks!

Posted by Rebecca Sato

*This post was adapted from material provided by the University of California at Berkeley.

Links:
http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/MSD-nanoradio.html

∑ For more information on the research of Alex Zettl, visit his Website at http://www.physics.berkeley.edu/research/zettl/

∑ To read more about the nanoradio, see TEM images and listen to songs recorded off it, visit the Website at http://www.physics.berkeley.edu/research/zettl/highlights.html