Nanomechanical Device Bridges Classic And Quantum Physics
Nanotechnology leapt into the realm of quantum mechanics this past winter when an antenna-like sliver of silicon one-tenth the width of a human hair oscillated in a lab in a Boston University basement. With two sets of protrusions, much like the teeth from a two-sided comb or the paddles from a rowing shell, the antenna not only exhibits the first quantum nanomechanical motion but is also the world's fastest moving nanostructure.
Source: PhysOrgA team of Boston University physicists led by Assistant Professor Pritiraj Mohanty developed the nanomechanical oscillator. Operating at gigahertz speeds, the technology could help further miniaturize wireless communication devices like cell phones, which exchange information at gigahertz frequencies. But, more important to the researchers, the oscillator lies at the cusp of classic physics, what people experience everyday, and quantum physics, the behavior of the molecular world.
Comprised of 50 billion atoms, the antenna built by Mohanty’s team is so far the largest structure to display quantum mechanical movements.
“It’s a truly macroscopic quantum system,” says Alexei Gaidarzhy, the paper’s lead author and a graduate student in the BU College of Engineering’s Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering. The device is also the fastest of its kind, oscillating at 1.49 gigahertz, or 1.49 billion times a second, breaking the previous record of 1.02 gigahertz achieved by a nanomachine produced by another group.
According to Gaidarzhy, during the past several decades engineers have made phenomenal advances in information technology by shrinking electronic circuitry and devices to fit onto semiconductor chips. Shrinking electronic or mechanical systems further, he says, will inevitably require new paradigms involving quantum theory. For example, these mechanical/quantum mechanical hybrids could be used for quantum computing.
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