Breakthrough Magnetometer

Tweet From www.nanotech-now.comMPhase has about 25 employees, most of which have been assigned to the task of helping to make its magnetometer 50 times smaller and 1,000 times more sensitive than the most powerful devices on the market today. While current devices are expensive, bulky and require supercooling to -455 F, the model in progress at mPhase works at room temperature, fits on the dateline of a penny and can pick up on a metal object from more than 30 feet away.

The company, founded in 1996, has two other technologies in development. It is working on transmitting television over high-speed Internet lines and nanotechnology-based batteries.

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Bose-Einstein condensates magnetometer Physicists at the University of Heidelberg have used a one-dimensional BEC as a sensitive probe of the magnetic fields emanating from a nearby sample. The field sensitivity achieved thereby is at the level of magnetic fields of nanotesla strength (equivalent to an energy scale of about 10-14 electronvolt) with a spatial resolution of only 3 microns. Some methods (such as scanning hall probe microscopes) can attain finer spatial resolution and some methods (such as superconducting quantum interference devices -- SQUIDs) can attain higher magnetic sensitivity, but for its range, the Heidelberg device has a region of the sensitivity-vs-resolution space all to itself.

In both its battery and magnetometer efforts, mPhase has joined forces with Bell Labs. The two have inked deals to co-develop, market and sell the nanobatteries and magnetometers.