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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

Case Western Reserve University researchers make dynamic advances with new atomically thin device [case.edu]

Researchers at Case Western Reserve University are developing atomically thin "drumheads" able to receive and transmit signals across a radio frequency range far greater than what we can hear with the human ear. But the drumhead is tens of trillions times (10 followed by 12 zeros) smaller in volume and 100,000 times thinner than the human eardrum. The advances will likely contribute to making the next generation of ultralow-power communications and sensory devices smaller and with greater detection and tuning ranges.

[...] The work represents the highest reported dynamic range for vibrating transducers of their type. To date, that range had only been attained by much larger transducers operating at much lower frequencies—like the human eardrum, for example.

"What we've done here is to show that some ultimately miniaturized, atomically thin electromechanical drumhead resonators can offer remarkably broad dynamic range, up to ~110dB, at radio frequencies (RF) up to over 120MHz," Feng said. "These dynamic ranges at RF are comparable to the broad dynamic range of human hearing capability in the audio bands."

Electrically tunable single- and few-layer MoS2 nanoelectromechanical systems with broad dynamic range [sciencemag.org] (open, DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aao6653) (DX [doi.org])

Original Submission