Thaindian News

STOCKHOLM (BNO NEWS) — The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on Tuesday decided to award the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics to Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov.

The honorable prize was awarded to Geim and Novoselov for their groundbreaking experiments regarding two-dimensional material graphene, which is a flake of carbon that is only one atom thick.

“A thin flake of ordinary carbon, just one atom thick, lies behind this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics,” the Academy said. “Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov have shown that carbon in such a flat form has exceptional properties that originate from the remarkable world of quantum physics.”

Geim, 51, and Novoselov, 36, have been working together for a long time and first worked together as a PhD-student in the Netherlands. Novoselov subsequently followed Geim to the United Kingdom where both of them originally studied and began their careers as physicists in Russia. Now they are both professors at the University of Manchester.

Graphene is a form of carbon. As a material it is completely new and not only the thinnest ever but also the strongest. As a conductor of electricity it performs as well as copper. As a conductor of heat it outperforms all other known materials and it is almost completely transparent, yet so dense that not even helium, the smallest gas atom, can pass through it. “Carbon, the basis of all known life on earth, has surprised us once again,” the Academy added.

Geim and Novoselov extracted the graphene from a piece of graphite such as is found in ordinary pencils. Using regular adhesive tape they managed to obtain a flake of carbon with a thickness of just one atom. This at a time when many believed it was impossible for such thin crystalline materials to be stable.

However, with graphene, physicists can now study a new class of two-dimensional materials with unique properties. Graphene makes experiments possible that give new twists to the phenomena in quantum physics. Also a vast variety of practical applications now appear possible including the creation of new materials and the manufacture of innovative electronics. Graphene transistors are predicted to be substantially faster than today’s silicon transistors and result in more efficient computers.

Since it is practically transparent and a good conductor, graphene is suitable for producing transparent touch screens, light panels, and perhaps even solar cells.

When mixed into plastics, graphene can turn them into conductors of electricity while making them more heat resistant and mechanically robust. This resilience can be utilized in new super strong materials, which are also thin, elastic and lightweight. In the future, satellites, airplanes, and cars could be manufactured out of the new composite materials.