Stretchy carbon sheets act as loudspeakers.

[n2doc]

Nanotubes turn on the tunes

Charles Choi


The flexible nanotube loudspeaker even works when attached to a flag (roughly 8 cm by 14.5 cm).Jiang Kaili et al., ACS Nano Letters
Stretchable, flexible, transparent sheets of carbon nanotubes can serve as loudspeakers, Chinese researchers have found1. The loudspeakers can be tailored into any size and shape, they say – and to prove their point, they have put one on a waving flag.

Physicist Kaili Jiang at the Tsinghua-Foxconn Nanotechnology Research Centre in Beijing and his colleagues created their loudspeakers from sheets of parallel carbon tubes, each about 10 nanometres across. When they applied an electric current alternating at an audio frequency to these thin films, they were surprised to find that the material could make sounds as loud as commercial speakers.

"It is so wonderfully simple, that it brings up a strong wave of 'Duh, why didn't I think of that!'," says physical chemist Howard Schmidt at Rice University in Houston, Texas.

The nanotube loudspeakers could be stretched to up to twice their original size without breaking and with little change to the intensity of the sound. Their transparent nature could allow them to be placed on windows, video screens, or paintings, the researchers suggest, and their flexibility could allow them to be wrapped around pillars or even be put on clothing. The researchers have already attached one of the transparent films to the screen of an iPod, to play sound from the device.

http://www.nature.com/news/2008/081103/full/news.2008.1201.html

Minority report, anyone?

[phantom power]

1. Wonder if they're reversed the process and used it as a microphone yet.

[anigbrowl]

2. Oughta work...I need to get me some nanotube sheet, stat!