Despite all the hubbub about carbon nanotubes as possible building blocks of superstrong materials or as components of supersmall electronics, few practical applications have yet come to fruition. Integrating nanotubes into functioning electronic devices has proved especially difficult, but researchers have now built a carbon-nanotube component into a simple radio receiver.
TINY RADIO. A single carbon nanotube (lower right), hooked up to wires to become the heart of a small electronic device (upper left), can produce an output voltage from an AM-radio transmission.
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