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The Future's Bright And Ferroelectric
Birmingham, UK, 26 March 2007: Researchers at
the University of Birmingham’s
School of Engineering are working towards achieving lower cost mobile phone
calls with less interference in built-up areas or when phone traffic is very
heavy using a novel class of materials called ferroelectrics.
Dr Tim Jackson from the University’s Department
of Electronic, Electrical and Computer Engineering has been building,
atom-by-atom, thin ferroelectric films which are less than 1 millionth of a
metre thick – a 50th of the width of a human hair - with a wafer of advanced
superconducting material on the top.
This futuristic sandwich, combining
ferroelectrics and superconductors – materials with no electrical resistance -
can be built into mobile phone base stations to enable them to function far more
effectively in difficult circumstances.
‘With ferroelectrics’ says Dr Jackson,
lead investigator ‘we can improve the performance of a mobile phone. Static
antennae with ferroelectric receivers can replace the rotating dishes now needed
by airports to maintain coverage with aircraft, and they can transform local
area, intranet systems by ensuring that signals are passed accurately to every
individual recipient without any interference.’
‘If there was, for example, a major emergency
such as a bomb blast in a big city, thousands of people would be trying to use
their mobiles, saturating the base stations with calls and clogging the
airwaves. Ferroelectric devices, which are similar to those used in smart
credit cards, cut out the interference, enabling base stations to handle far
more calls simultaneously.’
Funded by a Portfolio Partnership grant from the
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, this research is looking to
the time when ferroelectrics are routinely used in devices for changing the
frequencies and directions of many kinds of radio signals.
This month scientists at Birmingham are
acknowledging the 21st anniversary of the discovery of superconductivity above
the boiling point of nitrogen.
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