Nanotube Loudspeakers
Not many things that come up on my work RSS feed make my jaw drop. The video below, which shows a thin-film loudspeaker playing dance music while mounted on a waving flag, is pretty amazing. The nanospeaker in the video is 8.5 by 14.5 centimeters.
Video by American Chemical Society
Made by researchers at Tsinghua University in Beijing, the carbon nanotube speakers can play music just as loud and just as high quality as conventional loudspeakers do, even while being flexed and stretched.
Conventional loudspeakers use magnets and moving parts to produce sound-pressure waves. The nanospeakers work by the thermoacoustic effect. Alternating electrical current running through the thin films of nanotubes heats the surrounding air, causing it to expand and contract, creating sound waves.
These transparent thin-film speakers could be mounted on displays, eliminating the need for separate speakers. But one of the coolest things about the loudspeakers is that they’re flexible and stretchable, allowing the researchers to imagine singing jackets.
The research was published online in the journal Nano Letters.
Keep Reading
Most Popular
Scientists are finding signals of long covid in blood. They could lead to new treatments.
Faults in a certain part of the immune system might be at the root of some long covid cases, new research suggests.
Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. But nobody knows exactly why.
And that's a problem. Figuring it out is one of the biggest scientific puzzles of our time and a crucial step towards controlling more powerful future models.
OpenAI teases an amazing new generative video model called Sora
The firm is sharing Sora with a small group of safety testers but the rest of us will have to wait to learn more.
Google’s Gemini is now in everything. Here’s how you can try it out.
Gmail, Docs, and more will now come with Gemini baked in. But Europeans will have to wait before they can download the app.
Stay connected
Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review
Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.