Professor Kostya Novoselov, The University of Manhcester

Update: a recent paper by Professor Kostya Novoselo, Dr Cinzia Casiraghi and team from The University of Manchester’s National Graphene Institute, where they have made high efficiency photovoltaic elements using graphene and transition metal dichalcogenides, which are then postulated by commentators to be the building blocks for paintable solar panels – developing such a paint will be a new formualtion challenge, possibly the next grand challenge – certainly one of the discussions we will be having at the conference during our Graphene day on 20th June when the authors will be present – for more details have a look at the university’s press release and the quoted Science paper.

The conference committee was very excited to be the first NanoFormulation conference to have a Nobel Laureate as a key speaker, Prof. Kostya Novoselov.  Professor Novoselov and Professor Greim were jointly awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics for their preparation of graphene at The University of Manchester in 2004.  The rapidity of award of the Nobel Prize after the preparation of graphene, underlines how game changing graphene is for physics, in the intervening period scientists around the world have demonstrated many applications where graphene’s unique properties are exploited, now is the time to turn these into real products through formulation.  Dr Cinzia Casiraghi a key member of the graphene team at The University of Manchester has kindly agreed to stand in for Professor Novoselov.

You’ve been working on formulations for a long time and have seen many next big things.  All have come and gone, with formulation carrying on much as before, so why do you need to pay attention to graphene.  Well graphene really is different, graphene is the first 2D material available and as such its properties are not just evolutionarily different to other materials, but truely revolutionarily different.  Watch the short video below from Cambridge Univeristy for the EU Graphene Flagship.

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Professor Novoselov will talk about graphene in the context of materials in the flatland, graphene is just one 2D material, but it is opening up a whole new zoo of 2D materials – click for details.