Sir Andrey Konstantinovich Geim is a Fellow of the Royal Society, fellow of the University of Manchester and a Russian-born British-Dutch physicist. Together with Konstantin Novoselov, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2010 for his work on graphene. He is currently Regius Professor and Director of the Center for Meso-Science and Nanotechnology at the University of Manchester.
Andrey Geim: biography
Born on 10/21/58 in the family of Konstantin Alekseevich Geim and Nina Nikolaevna Bayer. His parents were Soviet engineers of German origin. According to Geim, his mother's grandmother was Jewish and he suffered from anti-Semitism because his last name sounds Jewish. Game has a brother Vladislav. In 1965 his family moved to Nalchik, where he studied at a school specializing in English. After graduating with honors, he twice tried to enter MEPhI, but was not accepted. Then he applied to the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, and this time he managed to enter. According to himAccording to him, the students studied very hard - the pressure was so strong that often people broke down and left their studies, and some ended up with depression, schizophrenia and suicide.
Academic career
Andrei Geim received his diploma in 1982, and in 1987 he became a PhD in metal physics at the Institute of Solid State Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Chernogolovka. According to the scientist, at that time he did not want to pursue this direction, preferring elementary particle physics or astrophysics, but today he is satisfied with his choice.
Game worked as a research fellow at the Institute of Microelectronics Technology at the Russian Academy of Sciences, and since 1990 at the Universities of Nottingham (twice), Bath and Copenhagen. According to him, he could do research abroad, and not deal with politics, which is why he decided to leave the USSR.
Working in the Netherlands
Andrey Geim took his first full-time position in 1994, when he became an assistant professor at the University of Nijmegen, where he studied mesoscopic superconductivity. He later received Dutch citizenship. One of his graduate students was Konstantin Novoselov, who became his main research partner. However, according to Geim, his academic career in the Netherlands was far from rosy. He was offered professorships at Nijmegen and Eindhoven, but he turned it down because he found the Dutch academic system too hierarchical and full of petty politicking, it is completely different from the British one, where every employee is equal in rights. In his Nobel lecture, Game later said that this situation was a bit surreal, as outside the walls of the university he was warmly welcomed everywhere, including his supervisor and other scientists.
Moving to the UK
In 2001, Game became Professor of Physics at the University of Manchester, and in 2002 was appointed Director of the Manchester Center for Meso-Science and Nanotechnology and Professor Langworthy. His wife and longtime collaborator Irina Grigorieva also moved to Manchester as a teacher. Later Konstantin Novoselov joined them. Since 2007, Game has been a Senior Fellow at the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council. In 2010, the University of Nijmegen appointed him Professor of Innovative Materials and Nanoscience.
Research
Game has found a simple way to isolate a single layer of graphite atoms, known as graphene, in collaboration with scientists from the University of Manchester and IMT. In October 2004, the group published their findings in the journal Science.
Graphene consists of a layer of carbon, the atoms of which are arranged in the form of two-dimensional hexagons. It is the thinnest material in the world, as well as one of the strongest and hardest. The substance has many potential uses and is an excellent alternative to silicon. One of the first uses for graphene could be the development of flexible touchscreens, Geim says. He did not patent the new material because it would require a certainscope and partner in industry.
The physicist was developing a biomimetic adhesive that became known as gecko tape due to the stickiness of the gecko's limbs. These studies are still in their early stages, but already give hope that in the future people will be able to climb ceilings like Spider-Man.
In 1997, Game studied the effects of magnetism on water, which led to the famous discovery of direct diamagnetic levitation of water, which became widely known due to the demonstration of a levitating frog. He also worked on superconductivity and mesoscopic physics.
On the choice of subjects for his research, Game said he despises the approach of many choosing a subject for their Ph. D. and then continuing the same subject until retirement. Before he got his first full-time position, he changed his subject five times and it helped him learn a lot.
In a 2001 paper, he named his beloved hamster Tisha as co-author.
History of the discovery of graphene
One autumn evening in 2002 Andrey Geim was thinking about carbon. He specialized in microscopically thin materials and wondered how the thinnest layers of matter could behave under certain experimental conditions. Graphite, composed of monatomic films, was an obvious candidate for research, but standard methods for isolating ultrathin samples would overheat and destroy it. So Game assigned one of the new graduate students, Da Jiang,try to get as thin a sample as possible, even a few hundred layers of atoms, by polishing a graphite crystal one inch in size. A few weeks later, Jiang brought a grain of carbon in a petri dish. After examining it under a microscope, Game asked him to try again. Jiang said that this was all that was left of the crystal. While Game jokingly reproached him for wiping a mountain to get a grain of sand, one of his seniors saw clumps of used tape in the wastebasket, the sticky side of which was covered with a grey, slightly shiny film of graphite residue.
In labs around the world, researchers use tape to test the adhesive properties of experimental samples. The layers of carbon that make up graphite are loosely bonded (since 1564, the material has been used in pencils, as it leaves a visible mark on paper), so that the adhesive tape easily separates the scales. Game placed a piece of duct tape under a microscope and found that the thickness of the graphite was thinner than what he had seen so far. By folding, squeezing and pulling apart the tape, he managed to achieve even thinner layers.
Game succeeded for the first time in isolating a two-dimensional material: a monatomic layer of carbon, which under an atomic microscope looks like a flat lattice of hexagons, reminiscent of a honeycomb. Theoretical physicists called such a substance graphene, but they did not assume that it could be obtained at room temperature. It seemed to them that the material would disintegrate into microscopic balls. Instead, Game saw that graphene remained in oneplane that ripples as matter stabilizes.
Graphene: remarkable properties
Andrei Game enlisted the help of graduate student Konstantin Novoselov, and they began to study a new substance fourteen hours a day. Over the next two years, they conducted a series of experiments, during which they discovered the amazing properties of the material. Because of its unique structure, electrons, without being influenced by other layers, can move through the lattice unhindered and unusually fast. The conductivity of graphene is thousands of times greater than that of copper. Game's first revelation was the observation of a pronounced "field effect" that occurs in the presence of an electric field, which allows control of conduction. This effect is one of the defining characteristics of silicon used in computer chips. This suggests that graphene could be a replacement that computer manufacturers have been looking for for years.
The road to recognition
Game and Konstantin Novoselov wrote a three-page paper describing their discoveries. It was rejected twice by Nature, with one reviewer stating that isolating a stable two-dimensional material was impossible, and another not seeing "sufficient scientific progress" in it. But in October 2004, an article titled "Electric field effect in atomic-thick carbon films" was published in the journal Science, making a great impression on scientists - before their eyes, fantasy became reality.
An Avalanche of Discoveries
Laboratories around the world began research using Geim's adhesive tape technique, and scientists have identified other properties of graphene. Although it was the thinnest material in the universe, it was 150 times stronger than steel. Graphene proved to be malleable, like rubber, and could stretch up to 120% of its length. Thanks to the research of Philip Kim, and then scientists at Columbia University, it was found that this material is even more electrically conductive than previously found. Kim put graphene in a vacuum where no other material could slow down the movement of its subatomic particles, and showed that it has "mobility" - the speed at which an electric charge travels through a semiconductor - 250 times faster than silicon.
Tech race
In 2010, six years after the discovery made by Andrei Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, the Nobel Prize was awarded to them after all. At that time, the media called graphene a “wonder material”, a substance that “could change the world.” He was approached by academic researchers in the fields of physics, electrical engineering, medicine, chemistry, etc. Patents were issued for the use of graphene in batteries, flexible screens, water desalination systems, advanced solar cells, ultra-fast microcomputers.
Scientists in China have created the world's lightest material - graphene airgel. It is 7 times lighter than air - one cubic meter of matter weighs only 160 g. Graphene airgel is created by freeze-drying a gel containing graphene and nanotubes.
To the University of Manchester,where Game and Novoselov work, the British government invested $60 million to create the National Graphene Institute on its basis, which would allow the country to be on a par with the world's best patent holders - Korea, China and the United States, which began the race to create the world's first revolutionary products based on new material.
Honorary titles and awards
An experiment with magnetic levitation of a live frog did not bring quite the result that Michael Berry and Andrey Game expected. The Ig Nobel Prize was awarded to them in 2000
In 2006 Game received the Scientific American 50 award.
In 2007, the Institute of Physics awarded him the Mott Prize and Medal. At the same time, Game was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.
Game and Novoselov shared the 2008 Europhysics Prize "for the discovery and isolation of the monatomic layer of carbon and the determination of its remarkable electronic properties." In 2009, he received the Kerber Award.
The 2010 Andre Geim John Carthy Award from the US National Academy of Sciences was given "for his experimental realization and study of graphene, a two-dimensional form of carbon."
Also in 2010, he received one of the six honorary professorships of the Royal Society and the Hughes Medal "for the revolutionary discovery of graphene and its remarkable properties." Geim has been awarded honorary doctorates from Delft University of Technology, ETH Zurich, UniversitiesAntwerp and Manchester.
In 2010 he was awarded the Order of the Netherlands Lion for his contributions to Dutch science. In 2012, for services to science, Game was promoted to bachelor knights. He was elected a Foreign Corresponding Member of the United States Academy of Sciences in May 2012
Nobel Laureate
Game and Novoselov were awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics for their pioneering work on graphene. Hearing about the award, Game said he didn't expect to receive it this year and has no plans to change his immediate plans. A modern physicist has expressed the hope that graphene and other two-dimensional crystals will change the daily life of mankind in the same way that plastic did. The award made him the first person to win both the Nobel Prize and the Ig Nobel Prize at the same time. The lecture took place on December 8, 2010 at Stockholm University.
