Novoselov, Sir Konstantin Sergeevich
Sir Konstantin Sergeevich Novoselov, 1974–, Russian-British physicist, Ph.D. Univ. of Nijmegen, Netherlands, 2004. He has been a research associate at the Univ. of Manchester, England, since 2001. In 2010 Novoselov was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics with Andre Geim for groundbreaking experiments regarding graphene. Just one carbon atom thick, graphene has a honeycomblike structure. Graphite, which is a major component of the lead in ordinary pencils, has a tiered structure of carbon sheets, but attempts to break it down into its constituent sheets had only resulted in thin sheets of graphite. In 2004 Geim and Novoselov made graphene by sticking a flake of graphite debris onto adhesive tape and folding the tape over the flake and pulling it apart, which cut the flake in two; they repeated the process until they had a sheet just one atom thick.