Nanotube Radios Could Outperform Silicon - News and Analysis by PC Magazine Page 1 of 3

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news Nanotube Radios Could Outperform Silicon

2.3.2008 01.29.08 Yahoo Employees Wonder

if Fun Might Be Over Total posts: 1 2.2.2008 EU a Likely Skeptic of By Reuters -Yahoo Merger CHICAGO (Reuters) - Transistor radios tinier than a grain of sand, made 2.1.2008 using nanotechnology, can not only tune in to the traffic report, but may Microsoft-Yahoo: Great for Mobile Users? end up outperforming current silicon-based electronics, U.S. researchers said on Monday. 2.1.2008 'Madden' Game Picks The researchers made the microscopic radios out of carbon nanotubes—tiny Patriots to Win Super Bowl strands of carbon atoms—and say in theory they could lead to faster 2.1.2008 devices. Dominance Could Aid Microsoft-Yahoo They overcame a series of obstacles that have defeated efforts to make nano-radios, including getting amplification, by making their devices on quartz wafers. View All "Our goal is not to make tiny radios per se, but really to develop nanotubes as a higher-performing semiconductor," said John Rogers, a professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Illinois.

He said the devices are meant to showcase a new way of making carbon Storage Solution Zone: Seagate/Maxtor nanotubes in perfectly aligned rows, much like strands of silky hair that Lenovo Notebook Zone: Lenovo have been combed flat. HP Storage Solution Center: Hewlett Packard These strands are a hundred thousand times smaller than the width of a HP Proliant Server Buying Guide: Hewlett Packard human hair, forming a thin layer of semiconductor material that can be used Norton Protection Center: Norton in electronics devices and circuits. APC Cooling and Power Info Center: APC APC-MGE UPS Systems "The radio is really a step along the path to building new platforms for

electronics technology," said Rogers, whose study appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . It's time for QuickBooks Pro. Get $20 off now! "We're interested in nanotubes not because they are small but because Looking to stand out above your competition? smallness imparts some electronic properties that are very appealing," he Keeping Your SQL Server™ Databases Defragmented said. Easy and Affordable Solution for Your Network "You could make a faster device." Norton starts, scans and runs faster than ever. He said a key to the work is to gain control over what shapes the tubes take and how they are configured. The researchers make the tubes by combining carbon and heat and a catalyst on a special wafer material that makes the tubes line up in an orderly way. ultimate utility guide "There are millions of them all in these perfectly aligned arrays," Rogers TaskPower 3 Puts System said. Control in Your Hands Tips for Your Next Digital Camera After they have made the arrays of tubes, he said the rest of the process is Megapixels, digital vs. optical Defrag-A-File 2: Optimize zoom... Confused by all the digital Your Drive very similar to making electronics using conventional silicon chips. camera jargon? Here are some quick tips before buying your next digital The researchers teamed up with radio frequency electronics engineers at File Utility Pack: Batch point-and-shoot camera. Rename Files and Gather Northrop Grumman Corp Electronics Systems in Linthicum, Maryland, to File Lists build and test the radios. • Video Tech Tips Archive Folder Phantom: Hide Your Files and Folders They consist of two radio frequency amplifiers, a radio frequency mixer and an audio amplifier, all made from the carbon nanotube materials. Regular- 3 Games in 3 Minutes StoreItAll: Keep Important sized headphones plug directly into an output transistor made from the Data in a Centralized, Brian Intihar, Previews Editor for Searchable Location nanotube material. And they used a regular-sized antenna. Electronic Gaming Monthly, joins DL.TV's Scott Asnault to talk about In one test, the researchers tuned one of the nanotube-transistor radios to a Burnout: Paradise, Harvey Birdman: View All Baltimore radio station and picked up the traffic report. Attorney At Law and NFLTour. • DL.TV Archive Rogers said the device could work better and have less distortion than some top sellers of the tiniest silicon chip technology used today. Compare Store Deals Most Popular Videos 1. Sharp LC-46D64U TV "The radio itself is not interesting," Rogers said. "But the fact that we are at Product Review: Apple MacBook Air a point that we can do things like a radio is a good milestone for us." Product Review: LG Voyager 2. CrankyGeeks: Vista SP1 Wasn't Worth The Wait Panasonic TH- (Editing by Maggie Fox and Mohammad Zargham) DL.TV: HDTVs for this Holiday Season Tech Tip: Speed Up Windows XP

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