One of the biggest bottlenecks to miniaturisation in modern electronics is the fact that antennas remain far larger than electronic circuits, so ultra-small antennas could transform wireless communications and have been called the 'last frontier' of semiconductor design.
"Antennas, or aerials, are one of the limiting factors when trying to make smaller and smaller systems, since below a certain size, the losses become too great," said Professor Gehan Amaratunga of Cambridge University's Department of Engineering, who led the research.
The foundation of current understand of electromagnetic radiation comes from theories first proposed by James Clerk Maxwell in the 19th century, which state that electromagnetic radiation is generated by accelerating electrons.
But in new results published in the journal Physical Review Letters, Amaratunga’s team have proposed that electromagnetic waves are generated not...