Andrey Geim, modern scientist physicist: biography, scientific achievements, awards and prizes

Sir Andrey Konstantinovich Geim is a full member of the Royal Society, an employee of the University of Manchester and a British-Dutch physicist, born in Russia. Together with Konstantin Novoselov in 2010 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on graphene. Currently he is Regius Professor and Director of the Center for Mesonoscience and Nanotechnology at the University of Manchester.

Andrey Geim: Biography

He was born on 21.10.58 in the family of Konstantin Alekseyevich 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 name sounds Jewish. He has a brother Vladislav. In 1965, his family moved to Nalchik, where he studied at a school specializing in English. Having graduated with honors, he twice tried to enter MEPI, but was not accepted. Then he submitted documents to MIPT, and this time he managed to do. According to him, the students studied very hard - the pressure was so strong that people often broke down and left school, and some ended up with depression, schizophrenia and suicide.

Academic career

Andrei Geim received his diploma in 1982, and in 1987 he became a candidate of sciences in the field of the physics of metals 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 the physics of elementary particles or astrophysics, but today he is pleased with his choice.

Geim worked as a research fellow at the Institute of Microelectronics Technologies in the Russian Academy of Sciences, and since 1990 - at the universities of Nottingham (twice), Bath and Copenhagen. According to him, abroad he could do research, and not have to deal with politics, therefore he decided to leave the USSR.

Work in the Netherlands

His first full-time position, Andrei Geim took in 1994, when he became an associate professor at the University of Nijmegen, where he was engaged in mesoscopic superconductivity. Later he received Dutch citizenship. One of his graduate students was Konstantin Novoselov, who became his main scientific partner. Nevertheless, according to Geim, his academic career in the Netherlands was far from cloudless. He was offered a professorship in Nijmegen and Eindhoven, but he refused, because he found the Dutch academic system too hierarchical and full of petty politicking, it is completely different from the British one, where each employee is equal in rights. In his Nobel lecture, Heym later said that this situation was a little surreal, as outside the university he was warmly welcomed everywhere, including his supervisor and other scientists.

Moving to the UK

In 2001, Heim became a professor of physics at the University of Manchester, and in 2002 he was appointed director of the Manchester Center for Mesonoscience and Nanotechnology and Professor Langworthy. Wife and his long-time co-author Irina Grigorieva also moved to Manchester as a teacher. Later they were joined by Konstantin Novoselov. Since 2007, Geim has become a senior research fellow of the Council for Engineering and Physical Research. In 2010, the University of Nijmegen appointed him professor of innovative materials and nano-sciences.

Research

Geim managed to find a simple way to isolate one layer of graphite atoms, known as graphene, in collaboration with scientists from the University of Manchester and IMT. In October 2004 the group published the results of its work in the journal Science.

Graphene consists of a layer of carbon, whose atoms are arranged in the form of two-dimensional hexahedrons. It is the thinnest material in the world, and also one of the most durable and solid. The substance has many potential uses, and it is an excellent alternative to silicon. According to Geim, one of the first applications of graphene can be the development of flexible touch screens. He did not patent the new material, because for this he would need a certain scope and partner in the industry.

The physicist was engaged in the development of a biomimetic adhesive, which became known as the gecko tape because of the stickiness of the gecko's limbs. These studies are still in the early stages, but they already give hope that in the future people will be able to climb the ceilings, like Spider-Man.

In 1997, Geim studied the possibility of the effect of magnetism on water, which led to the famous discovery of direct diamagnetic levitation of water, which was widely known for demonstrating the levitating frog. He also worked on superconductivity and was engaged in mesoscopic physics.

Regarding the choice of the subjects of his research, Geim said that he despised the approach when many people choose the subject for their Ph.D. thesis, and then continue the same topic until retirement. Before he received his first full-time post, he changed his subject five times, and this helped him to learn a lot.

In 2001 he named co-author of his beloved hamster Tishu.

The history of graphene discovery

In one of the autumn evenings of 2002, Andrei Geim speculated about carbon. He specialized in microscopically thin materials and wondered how the finest layers of matter can behave under certain experimental conditions. Graphite, consisting of monatomic films, was an obvious candidate for research, but standard methods for isolating ultrafine samples would overheat and destroy it. Therefore, Geim instructed one of the new graduate students, Da Jiang, to try to get as thin a sample as possible, at least a few hundred layers of atoms, polishing a one-inch-thick graphite crystal. A few weeks later, Jiang brought a grain of carbon in a Petri dish. After studying it under a microscope, Geim asked him to try again. Jiang said that this is all that is left of the crystal. At a time when Geim jokingly reproached him for the fact that the graduate student had erased the mountain to get a grain of sand, one of his older comrades saw in a trash can of lumps of used scotch, the sticky side of which was covered with a gray, slightly shiny film of graphite residues.

In laboratories around the world, researchers use tape to test the adhesive properties of experimental samples. The layers of carbon that make up graphite are loosely connected (since 1564 the material is used in pencils, since it leaves a visible trace on the paper), so that the scotch easily separates the scales. Heim placed a piece of adhesive tape under the microscope and found that the thickness of the graphite was less than that which he had seen so far. Folding, squeezing and severing the tape, he managed to achieve even more subtle layers.

Geim managed to isolate for the first time a two-dimensional material: a monoatomic layer of carbon, which under the atomic microscope looks like a flat lattice of hexagons resembling bees' honeycombs. Theoretical physicists called such a substance graphene, but they did not expect it to be obtained at room temperature. They thought the material would fall into microscopic balls. Instead, Geim saw that graphene remains in one plane, which is covered with ripples as the substance stabilizes.

Graphene: remarkable properties

Andrei Geim resorted to the help of graduate student Konstantin Novoselov, and they began to study the new substance fourteen hours a day. In the next two years, they conducted a series of experiments, during which amazing properties of the material were discovered. Because of its unique structure, the electrons, without experiencing the influence of other layers, can move around the grate unhindered and unusually fast. The conductivity of graphene is thousands of times that of copper. The first revelation for Heim was the observation of a pronounced "field effect", manifested in the presence of an electric field, which makes it possible to control the conductivity. This effect is one of the defining characteristics of silicon used in computer chips. This suggests that graphene can be a substitute for it, which computer manufacturers have been looking for for many years.

The path to recognition

Game and Constantine Novoselov wrote a three-page work describing their discoveries. It was rejected twice by Nature, one reviewer of which stated that isolation of stable two-dimensional material is impossible, and the other did not see in it "sufficient scientific progress". But in October 2004, an article entitled "The effect of an electric field in carbon films of atomic thickness" was published in the journal Science, making a great impression on scientists - they had a fantasy before their very eyes.

Avalanche of discoveries

Laboratories around the world have begun research using Heim's adhesive tape technology, 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 was supple, like rubber, and could stretch to 120% of its length. Thanks to the research of Philip Kim, and later scientists from Columbia University, it was found that this material is even more electrically conductive than was previously established. Kim placed the graphene in a vacuum, where no other material could slow the movement of its subatomic particles, and showed that it has "mobility" - the speed with which an electric charge passes through a semiconductor - 250 times greater than that of silicon.

Race Technology

In 2010, six years after the discovery, which was made by Andrei Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, they still received the Nobel Prize. Then the media called graphene "miracle material," a substance that "can change the world." He was approached by academic researchers in the fields of physics, electrical engineering, medicine, chemistry, and others. Grenades have been patented in batteries, flexible screens, desalination systems, advanced solar batteries, ultrafast microcomputers.

Scientists in China have created the lightest material in the world - graphene-airgel. It is 7 times lighter than air - one cubic meter of substance weighs only 160 g. Graphene airgel is created by freezing a gel containing graphene and nanotubes.

At the University of Manchester, where Geim and Novoselov work, the British government invested $ 60 million to create on its base the National Graphene Institute, which would allow the country to be on par with the world's best patent holders - Korea, China and the United States, which started the race for the creation of the first In a world of revolutionary products based on new material.

Honorary titles and awards

The experiment with the magnetic levitation of the living frog brought not exactly the result expected by Michael Berry and Andrei Geim. The Shnobelev Prize was awarded to them in 2000.

In 2006, Geim received the Scientific American 50 award.

In 2007, the Institute of Physics awarded him the Mott award and medal. At the same time, Geim was elected a member of the Royal Society.

Geim and Novoselov shared the 2008 Eurofizika Award "for the discovery and isolation of a monatomic carbon layer and the determination of its remarkable electronic properties." In 2009 he received the award of Kerber.

The next award of Andrew Heime, named after John Carty, to which he was awarded by the National Academy of Sciences of the United States in 2010, was given "for his experimental realization and research of graphene, a two-dimensional form of carbon."

Also in 2010, he received one of six honorary professorships of the Royal Society and a Hughes medal "for the revolutionary discovery of graphene and the identification of its remarkable properties." He was awarded the honorary doctoral degrees from Delft Technical University, the Higher Technical School of Zurich, the universities of Antwerp and Manchester.

In 2010, he became a Knight of the Order of the Netherlands Lion for his contribution to Dutch science. In 2012, for his services to science, Heym was promoted to the Bachelor of Arts. He was elected a foreign correspondent member of the United States Academy of Sciences in May 2012.

Nobel laureate

Geim and Novoselov for innovative pioneering graphene were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2010. Hearing about the award, Geim said he did not expect to receive it this year and is not going to change his immediate plans on this. The modern scientist-physicist expressed the hope that graphene and other two-dimensional crystals will change the daily life of mankind in the same way as plastic did. The award made him the first person to become a Nobel and Shnobelev Prize winner at the same time. The lecture was held on December 8, 2010 at the University of Stockholm.