Nobel won thanks to Scotch tape

Two Russian-born scientists shared the Nobel Prize in physics on Tuesday for groundbreaking experiments with a superthin but superstrong material that is a potential building block for faster computers, improved TV screens and lighter airplanes and satellites.

At a time when multibillion-dollar particle accelerators and orbiting telescopes are often deemed necessary for breakthroughs in physics, University of Manchester Professors Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov used Scotch tape to isolate graphene, a form of carbon only one atom thick but more than 100 times stronger than steel, and showed that it has exceptional properties, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said.

Among other things, graphene is able to conduct electricity as well as copper and to conduct heat better than any other known material, and it is transparent.

"It has all the potential to change your life in the same way that plastics did," Geim said Tuesday. "It is really exciting."

In its statement, the Royal Academy said, "Carbon, the basis of all known life on earth, has surprised us once again

Geim, 51, is a Dutch national, and Novoselov, 36, holds both British and Russian citizenship. Both were born in Russia and started their careers in physics there. They first worked together in the Netherlands before moving to Britain, where they reported isolating graphene in 2004.

Novoselov is the youngest winner since 1973 of a prize that normally goes to scientists with decades of experience. The youngest Nobel laureate was Lawrence Bragg, who was 25 when he shared the physics prize with his father, William Bragg, in 1915.

Geim said he didn't expect to win the prize this year either and had forgotten that it was Nobel time when the prize committee called him from Stockholm.

The two will split the prize's $1.5 million monetary award.

The two scientists used simple Scotch tape as a crucial tool in their experiments, peeling off thin flakes of graphene from a piece of graphite, the stuff of pencil leads.

"It's a humble technique. But the hard work came later," Geim said.

Paolo Radaelli, a physics professor at the University of Oxford, marveled at the simple methods the winners used.

Geim last year won the prestigious Korber European Science Award for the discovery, the University of Manchester said. He also won the "Ig nobel" prize in 2000 for making a frog levitate in a magnetic field. That award is handed out by the Annals of Improbable Research magazine for silly-sounding scientific discoveries that often have surprisingly practical applications.

Phillip Schewe, spokesman for the American Institute of Physics in College Park, Md., said the Nobel given to Geim and Novoselov was well-deserved.

"Graphene is the thinnest material in the world, it's one of the strongest, maybe the strongest material in the world. It's an excellent conductor. Electrons move through it very quickly, which is something you want to make circuits out of," he said.

He said graphene may be a good material for making integrated circuits, small chips with millions of transistors that are the backbone of all modern telecommunications. Its properties could also lead to potential uses in construction material, Schewe said, but added it would take a while "before this sort of technology moves into mainstream application."

Lars Samuelson, a physics professor at the University of Lund, Sweden, said graphene developments are underway in several areas, especially for making TV screens. "It lets through 98 percent of light, so it would be ideal to have on large TV screens," he said.