Move over, Jimi Hendrix: Scientists have created a guitar string that plays itself.
A team from Lancaster University and the University of Oxford designed a nano-electronic circuit which vibrates without any external force.
Mounting a carbon nanotube—roughly 100,000 times thinner than the guitar string it resembles—on metal supports, they cooled the wire to 0.02 degrees above zero, then passed an electrical current through it, causing the cable to vibrate.
So far, so good.
Researchers got a surprise, though, when they repeated the experiment without the forcing voltage: Under the right conditions, the wire spontaneously pulsates.
The nano-guitar string, according to Lancaster University, was playing itself.
“It took us a while to work out what was causing the vibrations, but we eventually understood,” lead researcher Edward Laird said.
“In such a tiny device, it is important that an electrical current consists of individual electrons. The electrons hop one by one onto the wire, each giving it a small push,” Laird, a lecturer in Lancaster’s physics department, explained. “Usually these pushes are random, but we realized that when you control the parameters just right, they will synchronize and generate an oscillation.”
Don’t expect the Arctic Monkeys* to whip out a nano-guitar during their next performance, though.
“The nanotube is far thinner than a guitar string, so it oscillates at much higher frequency—well into the ultrasound range so no human would be able to hear it,” Laird said.
Analysts can still assign it a note, though: Its frequency is 231 million hertz, which means its an A string, pitched 21 octaves above standard tuning.
Since it has no use at rock concerts, perhaps the nano-oscillator could be applied to science, instead—for the benefit of amplifying tiny forces in novel microscopes or measuring the viscosity of exotic quantum fluids.
Additional experiments will be pursued in a new laboratory Laird is setting up at Lancaster University, supported by a €2.7 million ($2.9 million) grant from the European Union.
* Forgive my possibly outdated musical reference: I listen mostly to The Greatest Showman soundtrack and Barry Manilow.
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