Sandia National Laboratories: World’s smallest, best acoustic amplifier emerges from 50-year-old hypothesis
Sandia scientists have built the world’s smallest and best acoustic amplifier. And they did it using a concept that was all but abandoned for almost 50 years.
According to a paper published last month in Nature Communications, the device is more than 10 times more effective than the earlier versions. The design and future research directions hold promise for smaller wireless technology.
Modern cellphones are packed with radios to send and receive phone calls, text messages and high-speed data. The more radios in a device, the more it can do. While most radio components, including amplifiers, are electronic, they can potentially be made smaller and better as acoustic devices. This means they would use sound waves instead of electrons to process radio signals.
“Acoustic wave devices are inherently compact because the wavelengths of sound at these frequencies are so small — smaller than the diameter of human hair,” Sandia scientist Lisa Hackett said. But until now, using sound waves has been impossible for many of these components.
