Traditional antennas are built to receive and transmit electromagnetic radiation, which has a relatively long wavelength. That means antennas must maintain a certain size in order to work efficiently.
Instead of designing antennas to work with electromagnetic radiation, Prof Sun’s team tailored the antennas to work with acoustic resonance. Because acoustic resonance waves have a wavelength some 10,000 times smaller than electromagnetic waves, this is said to enable an antenna to be created that’s orders of magnitude smaller than the most compact antennas currently available.
Importantly, since acoustic resonance and electromagnetic waves have the same frequency, acoustic antennas will work with wireless communication devices. And, according to the researchers, their antennas performed better than traditional kinds.
Apart from application in mobile phones and similar devices, Prof Sun’s team believes tiny antennas could lead to better injectible, implantable or ingestible medical devices. “Something that’s millimetres or even microns in size would make biomedical implantation much easier to achieve and the tissue damage would be much less,” Prof Sun concluded.