Tomorrow’s speakers could be made from ultrathin graphene sheets
Graphene has been hailed as a magical material for years, promising revolutions in everything from flexible phones to ultrathin transistors to night vision contact lenses, to name a few. Now, you can add speakers to that list. New research from the University of Exeter uses graphene to create a tiny chip that combines a speaker, amplifier, and equalizer.
Instead of using a physically vibrating coil or membrane to push air and produce sound as in traditional speakers, the new graphene method involves rapidly heating and cooling the graphene sheet with an electric current, which then causes the nearby air to expand and contract and create sound. The lack of mechanical components to physically move the air means that the graphene system can…
