Antennas just got a whole lot smaller.
Tiny chips that communicate via radio waves are a tenth to a hundredth the length of current state-of-the-art compact antennas. At only a couple hundred micrometers across — comparable to the thickness of a piece of paper — these next-gen antennas can relay the same types of signals as those used by TVs, cell phones and radios, researchers report August 22 in Nature Communications. The technological advance could pave the way to create wearable, or even injectable, electronics, says study coauthor Nian Sun, an electrical and computer engineer at Northeastern University in Boston.