Russian-born scientists win Nobel for showing carbon properties

(Oct.05, 2010) Two Russian-born scientists shared the 2010 Nobel Prize for physics, for showing how carbon just one atom thick behaved, a breakthrough with implications for areas from quantum physics to consumer electronics. Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, both with the University of Manchester in the U.K. conducted experiments with graphene, a new form of carbon that is both the thinnest and strongest material known. "Since it is practically transparent and a good conductor, graphene is suitable for producing transparent touch screens, light panels and maybe even solar cells," the committee said.
36-year-old Novoselov is a dual British-Russian citizen while 51-year-old Geim is a Dutch citizen. The pair extracted the super-thin material from a piece of graphite, such as that found in ordinary pencils, using adhesive tape to obtain a flake that was only one atom thick. The material is almost completely transparent, yet so dense that not even the smallest gas atom can pass through it. It also conducts electricity as well as copper.
The prize of 10 million Swedish crowns ($1.5 million), awarded by the Nobel Committee for Physics at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, was the second of this year's Nobel prizes with the prize for medicine announced on Monday.