Microphone made of atom-thick graphene could be used in smartphones

A microphone made from a single layer of atoms could shrink the one in your smartphone by more than 200 times, allowing for better noise cancellation without bulking up your device.

Most modern microphones consist of a membrane that vibrates when hit by sound, in turn converting that vibration into an electrical signal. Gerard Verbiest at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands and his colleagues have developed one that instead works using lasers.

Their…