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Tuesday, 20th October 2009 (435 views)

Scientists at Germany's Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have successfully developed and manufactured gold nanoantennas that could accelerate the transfer of data over wireless connections by up to 10,000 times.

Over 120 years after Heinrich Hertz discovered the electromagnetic nature of radio waves at the Technical College of Karlsruhe, researchers at the Nanoscale Science DFG-Heisenberg Group of KIT's Light Technology Institute have used an electron beam process to create gold nanoantennas ten million times smaller than standard one-metre long radio antennas, Azo Nano reports.

The frequency received by these nanoantennas is one million times higher than radio frequency, which allows for extremely rapid modulation of the signal.

This could enable data to be transferred at very high rates over wireless systems with reduced energy consumption.

"Hence, nanoantennas are considered a major basis of new optical high-speed data networks," the site noted.

With around 8,000 employees and a budget of some €700 million (£637 million), KIT is one of the largest teaching and research institutions in the world.

 

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