We’ve explained 2020’s Nobel Prizes. Now, The Diacritic’s Xing Hao and Rishav speak with one of the two winners of the 2010’s Nobel Prize in Physics, Prof. Sir Konstantin “Kostya” Novoselov. Not only is he a highly-distinguished physicist renowned for his groundbreaking work in isolating graphene, he is also formally trained in Chinese traditional painting. In this dialogue, Prof. Novoselov shares why he moved to Singapore, his current research, how his impatience motivated his scientific and artistic work, and his advice for young people today.
We understand that you moved to Singapore in 2019. What made you decide to come all the way to live and work in Singapore?
I have been linked to Singapore for quite a long time, probably since 2009, and I nearly moved to Singapore back at that time. In collaboration with the National University of Singapore, we started to build laboratories and clean rooms for my work. It didn’t work out even though the laboratories and the clean rooms we built were operational as a graphene centre—later becoming the Centre for Advanced 2D Materials (CA2DM)—and so I’ve been collaborating with people in Singapore ever since. I have lots of good friends and good collaborators here, so I am definitely not a novice to Singapore.
A year ago, I decided to move to Singapore again. The career of any scientist develops in a cyclic way: you start a topic, you develop it up to a certain level, and then you need to move on. It was quite a comfortable position in Manchester where I had been working before. The problem is that it was probably a little too comfortable—it was very centred around graphene and two-dimensional materials. At the University of Manchester, we created the National Graphene Institute (which operates very successfully now) and later another institute, the Graphene Engineering Innovation Centre (also fully operational). But, at certain moments, I thought that I would love to move on and develop topics beyond graphene. It’s a little bit difficult when you are in Manchester, the centre of graphene research, not because somebody forces you to work on graphene but because there are so many exciting things happening around graphene that it’s basically impossible to escape it. It just pulls you back into its orbit.
I mean, in terms of science, it’s still fantastic science. These years are the glory years for graphene—so many different things are happening. But I thought that it was probably time for me to move on. If I do not move on now, it will become more difficult for me to do so in the future. I thought that I would love to try some new things, and the National University of Singapore was kind enough to offer me a position and give me a place to try out new directions. But, at the same time, I didn’t need to come to an empty place; there were already some laboratories and capabilities ready, making it quite a synergetic move in that respect.
You mentioned that graphene research is currently a burgeoning field in 2D materials. What kind of research are you looking forward to in particular in your time in Singapore?
For Singapore, we’re trying to work on topics beyond the usual research in graphene. We try to work on smart materials, which are materials that are in dynamic states that can evolve in time and which we term as “functional intelligent materials.” These are materials out of equilibrium, whose properties can evolve and whose characteristics can change. We are only starting now, but we have already had some encouraging results.
That is so exciting! Could you give examples of some 2D materials which are the focus of current research apart from graphene?
Sure. There are dozens of 2D materials that people are interested in these days. Usually, people just focus on one type of material, and traditionally, the most popular material is hexagonal boron nitride, which is rather similar to graphene except that it is a strong insulator and white/translucent in colour. There are also semiconductors like molybdenum disulfide and many of the other transition metal dichalcogenides. There are even magnetic materials—a very popular direction. Another popular direction is two-dimensional superconductors, and a paper of ours on such a material was just accepted for publication.
An animation by the University of Sheffield on 2D materials beyond graphene. The technique of using sticky tape to isolate two-dimensional materials shown here was pioneered by Prof. Sir Novoselov and Prof. Sir Andre Geim, his former PhD. supervisor and research partner.
2D materials span an enormous class, such that you can find people working on 2D crystals who have never worked on graphene before. It’s truly a huge field.
We imagine that a layperson might not really understand why 2D materials are so significant, so could you explain why it is such an exciting field?
First of all, I think the major significance of 2D materials and graphene, in particular, is that it was completely unexpected that we could obtain them at all. All your previous experience and some fundamental reasoning would tell you that 2D materials should not exist. There are even theorems that state that there are no crystal structures in two dimensions, and yet we managed to obtain these materials in real life.
Moreover, physics in two dimensions is quite different from physics in three dimensions. For example, you cannot have knots in two dimensions; to make a knot, you need to go out of the 2D plane. Therefore, there are many deep, fundamental issues that make physics in 2D and physics in 3D very different. This is why many phenomena look very differently in two dimensions as compared to those in three dimensions, and this is also why people like to study electric transport in 2D, magnetism in 2D, superconductivity in 2D, and so on.
There are also some practical reasons why 2D materials are interesting and significant. Take graphene, for example. It has a very unique set of properties that allows for interesting technological innovations: it is the strongest material, the most conductive material, the most flexible material, and so on. Moreover, you can think about silicon technology as 2D because modern transistors work as though they are two-dimensional—there is a thin semiconductor layer that conducts a current. We basically create individual building blocks of that. You can see that those two-dimensional structures are fundamental for many technologies, like cellular membranes for ionic transport. These, in principle, can be two-dimensional as well.
As I said, many electronic devices are essentially two-dimensional, and here, we have access to the materials that are actually two-dimensional. We can thus rethink the world of technology, especially since 2D materials are naturally flexible and transparent, which is everything we want right now from our devices.
But for me, there is also another very interesting reason: if you have two-dimensional crystals, you can think of them as building blocks for three-dimensional materials. They are like pages on which you can write a short story, pages which you can then put together to make a book, and on which you can write much more complex stories. You can think of it as literally putting many two-dimensional crystals on top of one another to make a normal three-dimensional material. This will be a material that has never existed in the world before, but which we can now artificially create. It gives you a direct link to material engineering and designing materials, and that is what we do extensively these days.
Now, perhaps we can move towards the artistic side of your interests. We understand that you are very proficient and interested in Chinese art, and we wonder what fascinates you about it and why you first decided to pursue it.
I always wanted to learn how to paint, and I always drew the illustrations for all of my papers. Then, I finally had the chance to learn: I spent some time—an extensive period of time, in fact—in China. I found a teacher and asked him to teach me. He was initially very sceptical, but we are now best friends.
I like Chinese artwork for many reasons. Firstly, its brevity: the less you put on the paper, the better. It’s really this condensation of an idea into a few lines and a few strokes that really fascinates me. In fact, it’s very similar to what we do in physics. We usually do not study phenomena in their full complexity. We try to break them down into smaller, basic processes, describe each of them well, and then use them in combination to describe the big picture. That is why choosing only the most essential parts of the drawing is the interesting part of Chinese painting to me.
But I’m a very impatient person as well. That’s the reason why I chose my area of physics, condensed matter, because I am responsible here for my own research. I can start in the morning, make a device myself, measure it in the evening, and complete the job on my own. This is unlike, say, people in CERN who have to work in big groups and design their experiments for years. I’m not trying to say that one branch of physics is better; it’s just that people with different personalities would choose different branches. It’s about how you like to work, and it’s similar to Chinese art: I can stand up and go to a desk and do a few strokes and most often just throw it away. But, from time to time, something good comes out of it.
Some of Prof. Novoselov’s artwork in a variety of styles. Click on each piece to see it in more detail. More of Prof. Novoselov’s artwork can be found here.
I see. Regarding your artistic works and your scientific works, have you taken inspiration from one and applied it to the other?
Do you always know, or do you ever know, where you get inspiration from? I don’t. I never know; for example, if I paint a landscape, I’m not sure if my inspiration was that particular landscape or if it was something else. So that’s the complex thing about creativity. What is creativity? Where is it coming from, and what actually triggers a good scientific idea, or a good painting? No one knows, so I cannot answer this question because I simply do not know. I do think that the creativity which we have both within science and outside of it has the same origin, but we don’t know what the origin is, you see.
Some of Prof. Novoselov’s landscape paintings. Click on each painting to see it in more detail.
I wonder if you have a favorite piece of art and if you could tell us about it.
Probably not. I mean, I like art, but what is “good”? When you start painting, you actually start to feel art better than when you don’t paint. You start to feel it, and eventually you can distinguish between art and non-art.
It’s very difficult to say what is art and what is not, where it’s just a painting and where it’s a real piece of art. In my case, I would say I can probably produce around ten good artistic pieces per year. Most of the thing I paint I simply throw away, because you can do a good painting but you know that it’s not art. It is just copy-and-pasting from your previous ideas or from someone else. So no, I probably won’t be able to tell you what’s my favorite. It’s a difficult question, and I don’t think you can rank art anyway. It’s either art or it’s not art, so there is only one rank.
Right. In that case, can you tell us about some artists that you admire and respect?
I respect any artist so long as they are artists. As I said, you can recognize an artist when you see one. It’s like pornography. What is pornography? No one can define it exactly, but you know it when you see it, and I think it’s the same with science. Is there any particular scientist whom you respect? No, you just respect all the scientists who produce something new. But, of course, there are many scientists who don’t produce anything new, who just produce hot air and do some copy-and-pasting of some previous job. I think the division should be not there, at the top one or the top three. The individuals should either be artists or non-artists.
About this connection between science and art— people in art have a general idea of what artistic beauty is like. Is there a similar notion of beauty in science that you have encountered or that you keep an eye out for in your work?
Well, there certainly exists a philosophy that science, like art, needs to be aesthetic and beautiful. Indeed, there are many examples like Maxwell’s equations and the symmetry arguments in particle physics. Some people take this very seriously and deeply and go to great lengths in search of theories with symmetry and beauty. Personally, I am not 100% there, but I do like my physics to be symmetric and beautiful. I like it when I can describe something in a single formula or a couple of sentences.
Your work in physics and in art are well known, but we were wondering if you have any hidden talents that people don’t know about.
I’m not even sure if I have talent in physics or in painting—I simply enjoy what I do. Currently, I’m trying to teach myself music, which is going quite slowly. Again, I am enjoying some symmetry and basic transitions—which I’m sure that any mathematician would be able to do—but it’s really just something which I like. It just amazes me how simple symmetry criteria give rise to something beautiful, but I don’t really go much further than that.
I see. Is there a particular instrument that you are currently interested in?
No. I can only play the piano because it is the simplest. It was just the equal tempered piano, the most basic one.
I wonder if you think that this is an exciting time for physics. I know that the 20th century was a very exciting time. Do you think there are still significant laws of nature yet to be discovered?
I’m sure there are. It is exciting, and I’m not sure if we can fully appreciate it. In different parts of physics, there are different levels of excitement, and people are excited about different things. In my specific field, there are many breakthroughs that are related to the topological properties of materials, how we characterize these topological properties, and how we can predict new properties based on that. That’s exactly what I spoke about before, when you really manage to describe the properties of materials with a few words, a few basic indices or one simple formula, and then you can expand it into something much more expansive. You can show that it actually has roots in some very basic principles of the construction of the materials.
There is a huge amount of work to be done, very exciting work and very fundamental work. I do not doubt at all that there will be plenty of exciting discoveries still to be made.
Perhaps one last question. Since you did make a groundbreaking discovery early in your career, do you feel like you still have your best work ahead of you?
I’m not sure; we don’t usually operate with the terms “best work” or “not best work”. You typically work because you are excited about your work, because you’re currently very enthusiastic about this particular idea. If you’re not, then it’s not going to work at all. I really like what I’m doing now, and I don’t know if it’s going to be my best work. It’s the most exciting for me right now, and that’s what I like about my job. My life is not a preparation for some discovery 10 years down the line. You try to make it exciting for yourself, and you discover something new every day.
If you were to give advice to a young person, would you just say: “Follow what excites you”?
Exactly. There are still more unknowns than knowns in this world, and in whichever area you work, you can make a discovery. The only condition is that you have to be excited about it.
More information about the work for which the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Prof. Sir Andre Geim and Prof. Sir Novoselov can be found here.