Flexible Speakers

Duncan Billson and David Hitchens, “professors at the University of Warwick” have developed a new technology alongside university engineers for a “flexible speaker”. The speaker responds to the creation of “flexible displays”, expanding new innovations from visuals to sound.

Whereas “conventional speakers take an electric signal and generate a varying magnetic field that is used to vibrate a mechanical cone” to generate a sound, this new technology has a “a flexible laminate, which when excited with an electrical signal vibrates to produce the sound”. This sound created is said to be “powerful enough for public spaces, cars and homes”. The audio is “highly directional and accurate”.

The new creation is “paper-like”, “lightweight and just 0.25 millimetres thick”. The “flat, flexible laminate” is made from a range of different “thin, conducting and insulating materials”. Early experiments have used “two sheets of tin foil and an insulating layer of baking paper” in order to generate sound. All materials used mean that the speaker is “inexpensive to manufacture”.

The research closely links to our project aims, not simply due to the product of a speaker yet through the materials used. This inexpensive production process meets the needs found in a space saving, money saving market. The paper- like materials echoes our choice of paper in electronics due to its sustainability, ability to biodegrade as a renewable source. The extreme fineness of the new speaker means that it can be used in a range of settings as a space saving electronic, such as on walls and ceilings. A fineness of material however would bring a weakness to the new product and therefore this would need to be balanced when using paper in our future samples and experiments.

GANAPATI , P. (2009). WIRED. Retrieved from http://www.wired.com/2009/03/researchers-cre-2/.