Nobel Prize for Physics 2010 for graphene research of Geim and Novoselov
Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov have received the Nobel Prize for Physics 2010 for their breakthrough in research into two-dimensional graphene. Andre Geim has the Dutch nationality and prior to leaving for Manchester, he worked for more than six years at Radboud University Nijmegen. He now holds an endowed professorship there. Konstantin Novoselov is a former FOM PhD researcher who gained his doctorate under professor Jan Kees Maan at Radboud University Nijmegen in 2004. Since 2008, FOM has run a successful research programme in the field of graphene. Geim will speak about his research at the Physics@FOM Veldhoven congress in January 2011.
On 5 October, Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov received the Nobel Prize for Physics 2010 for their breakthrough in research into two-dimensional graphene.
Novoselov started his scientific career as a FOM PhD researcher in the group of Jan Kees Maan where he gained his doctorate in 2004. At the end of the 1990s (1994-2001) Geim was an associate professor in the same research group at Radboud University Nijmegen. They played an important role in setting up Dutch graphene research. FOM started a research programme on graphene in 2008.
"It is absolutely right that they receive the Nobel Prize now. They are unrivalled in their ability to translate a good idea into a fantastic research result using simple resources. Geim has successfully demonstrated this ability with a wide range of ideas. That is characteristic for his career: for example, he magnetically levitated a frog because he wanted to do something with magnetism at room temperature, and he discovered graphene using sellotape and subsequently developed Gecko tape. Both men have the unique combination of being brilliant scientists and extremely nice people," says FOM workgroup leader Jan Kees Maan, who was the PhD supervisor of Novoselov and is a former colleague of Geim.
Geim at Physics@FOM Veldhoven
Geim had previously won the counterpart of the Nobel Prize, the IgNobel Prize, and he is unique in having both prizes to his name. He still works at Radboud University Nijmegen and holds an honorary doctorate from Delft University of Technology. FOM is proud that Geim will be the keynote speaker at the annual congress Physics@FOM Veldhoven 2011 that will be held on Tuesday 18 and Wednesday 19 January at the NH Koningshof Hotel Veldhoven.
Lieven Vandersypen, who works as the programme leader in the FOM focus group on graphene research at Delft University of Technology responded enthusiastically: "This is fantastic news! Geim and Novoselov are exceptionally creative researchers and their work on graphene is the best illustration of this. They were the first to apply graphene to a substrate and achieved this by peeling off thin layers of graphene using an ordinary piece of sellotape. After their 'sellotape breakthrough', Geim and Novoselov have continued to set the tone in the discipline. The pair are constantly coming up with interesting and relevant experiments and that is fantastic to see. They shared the sellotape technique with anybody who wanted to learn it and besides the particularly interesting properties of the new material, the ease with which we can make graphene has contributed to a real explosion in the number of research activities. Nowadays, more than 50 publications per week appear with the word graphene in their title and companies such as Samsung and IBM are working hard on investigating possible applications in electronics, touch screens, LCDs et cetera. The extent to which these applications can be realised remains to be seen, and in that respect the Nobel Prize has perhaps been awarded a bit earlier than I would have expected. Nevertheless, I think it is fantastic. It gives our work on graphene a considerable boost and it is also a stimulus for the wider discipline of mesoscopic physics."
The prize will be awarded on 10 December 2010 in Stockholm. The winners will share an amount of 11 million Euros. Novoselov is the third FOM-PhD who wins a Nobel Prize, after Bloembergen en Veltman, of the total amount of 3.000 FOM-PhDs.
Source figure 2: http://static.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2010/sciback_phy_10.pdf
Information
About the Nobel Prize in Physics:
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2010/#
About Geim:
http://www.kennislink.nl/publicaties/de-vader-van-grafeen-1
About Physics@FOM Veldhoven:
www.fom.nl/veldhoven
About graphene research at FOM:
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Various FOM press releases:
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