by Tom Mackenzie
Seated inside one of China's most advanced science laboratories, two PhD students dressed from head to toe in protective white suits listen intently to Mariah Carey's pop classic Hero. It is not the song, but the millimetre-thin, transparent strip making the sound that captures their attention - a nano-speaker they hope will revolutionise where, and how, we listen to music.
"This is cutting edge," says Professor Shoushan Fan, director of the nanotechnology lab at Beijing's prestigious Tsinghua University. Without a cone, magnet or amplifier, the speaker, which looks little more than a slim film of see-through plastic, can be used to transform almost any surface into an auditorium. It is made from nanocarbon tubes which, when heated, make the air around them vibrate, producing the sound. "The speaker's bendy and flexible," says Fan. "You could stick it to the back window of your car and play music from there."
Mega investment
Fan's nano-speaker is just the tip of the iceberg in China's sweeping nanotech programme, which has the potential to transform its export-based economy and nearly every aspect of our lives, from food and clothes to medicine and the military.
Nanotechnology - the manipulation of matter on an atomic scale to develop new materials - is an industry predicted to be worth nearly £1.5tn pounds by 2012, and China is determined to corner the biggest chunk of the market.
China now produces more papers on nanotech than any other nation. Nanotech plants have sprung up in cities from Beijing in the north to Shenzhen in the south, working on products including exhaust-absorbing tarmac and carbon nanotube-coated clothes that can monitor health. Last month, researchers from Nanjing University and colleagues from New York University unveiled a two-armed nanorobot that can alter genetic code. It enables the creation of new DNA structures, and could be turned into a factory for assembling the building blocks of new materials.
"There's no end of areas in which nanotech is already being used," says Wilsdon. "It's the product of targeted investment for the development and refinement of novel nanomaterials. And the reason the Chinese focus on that area is because it's closer to the market."
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Seated inside one of China's most advanced science laboratories, two PhD students dressed from head to toe in protective white suits listen intently to Mariah Carey's pop classic Hero. It is not the song, but the millimetre-thin, transparent strip making the sound that captures their attention - a nano-speaker they hope will revolutionise where, and how, we listen to music."This is cutting edge," says Professor Shoushan Fan, director of the nanotechnology lab at Beijing's prestigious Tsinghua University. Without a cone, magnet or amplifier, the speaker, which looks little more than a slim film of see-through plastic, can be used to transform almost any surface into an auditorium. It is made from nanocarbon tubes which, when heated, make the air around them vibrate, producing the sound. "The speaker's bendy and flexible," says Fan. "You could stick it to the back window of your car and play music from there."
Mega investment
Fan's nano-speaker is just the tip of the iceberg in China's sweeping nanotech programme, which has the potential to transform its export-based economy and nearly every aspect of our lives, from food and clothes to medicine and the military.
Nanotechnology - the manipulation of matter on an atomic scale to develop new materials - is an industry predicted to be worth nearly £1.5tn pounds by 2012, and China is determined to corner the biggest chunk of the market.
China now produces more papers on nanotech than any other nation. Nanotech plants have sprung up in cities from Beijing in the north to Shenzhen in the south, working on products including exhaust-absorbing tarmac and carbon nanotube-coated clothes that can monitor health. Last month, researchers from Nanjing University and colleagues from New York University unveiled a two-armed nanorobot that can alter genetic code. It enables the creation of new DNA structures, and could be turned into a factory for assembling the building blocks of new materials.
"There's no end of areas in which nanotech is already being used," says Wilsdon. "It's the product of targeted investment for the development and refinement of novel nanomaterials. And the reason the Chinese focus on that area is because it's closer to the market."
Read more:
