Konstantinos Fostiropoulos
Konstantinos Fostiropoulos is a Greek physicist who has been working in Germany in the areas nano-materials, solid-state physics, molecular physics, astrophysics, and thermodynamics. From 2003 to 2016 he has been founder and head of the Organic Solar Cells Group at the Institute Heterogeneous Materials Systems within the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin. His scientific works include novel energy materials and photovoltaic device concepts, carbon clusters in the Interstellar Medium, and intermolecular forces of real gases.
In 1989 Fostiropoulos was the first to synthesize C60,
a molecular carbon modification, in preparative amounts by a specifically developed vacuum process. After the discovery of the molecule 1985 by Kroto et al., Fostiropoulos' work contributed essentially to the establishment of fundamental fullerene research as well as its applications.
In 2001/2002 he presented a bilayer heterojunction concept for organic photovoltaic devices applying vacuum processes for the formation of a molecular absorber layer consisting of Zn phthalocyanine and C60 molecules.
He has also been an expert in distance education who demonstrated in 1999 an experimental low band width connectivity transatlantic internet teaching platform.
On the occasion of the corona crisis, he set up a platform capable of hosting the virtual part of large hybrid scientific conferences.
Personal life
Migration
Fostiropoulos was born 20 June 1960 in Krya Vrysi, Pella, Greece, to Anastasios Fostiropoulos and Lemonia Fostiropoulou the second of three children. In 1961 his father emigrated to Mannheim, Germany, where later his wife followed with their two sons when Fostiropoulos was four years old. There, five years later his sister Eleni was born. Until they retired his parents Anastasios and Lemonia had been working as labourer and cleaner, respectively. In 2015 they re-immigrated in Greece, together with his sister Eleni and her family. His brother Niko was elected to the city council of Karlsruhe, Germany from 2000 to 2019, and has been the founder and owner of the centre for further education since 2005.Marriage
During his time as research fellow at the Institut für Medienkommunikation of the former in Sankt Augustin near Bonn, Fostiropoulos' relationship to his colleague Simone Lahme, a web designer and specialist for e-learning, began on the occasion of the Total Solar eclipse of August 11, 1999, which they had been observing together in Karlsruhe. They married in 2004 and have two children, Timon and Melina.Education
In his early years in Mannheim Fostiropoulos graduated from German basic primary Hilda-Schule and secondary Kurpfalzgymnasium Mannheim as well as from Greek afternoon primary school. Moreover, he graduated from the Städtische Musikschule Mannheim where he had attended as a guitarist the plucked instruments class of.Fostiropoulos studied physics at the nearby Heidelberg University where he was, particularly, intrigued by the Grand Unified Theory, laser physics and molecular physics. He obtained his Diploma after having joined the research group of Bernhard Schramm, Institute of Physical Chemistry.
In February 1989 he attended the "Dust Group" of Hugo Fechtig, Department Cosmophysics at Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics, where he worked as doctoral candidate on his thesis "C60 – eine neue Form des Kohlenstoffs". In February 1992 he received his Ph.D. from Heidelberg University.
Because of his family's financial constraints he had been working in various jobs during his studies: as classical guitar instructor at, sound engineer for simultaneous translation at , taxi driver in Mannheim, and teaching assistant of Physical Chemistry at Heidelberg University.
First scientific career – "fundamental research"
From 1986–88 Fostiropoulos was investigating effects of intermolecular forces in real gases at the Institute of Physical Chemistry, Heidelberg University. One focus was to study the thermodynamic properties of freons in order to substitute them by environmentally compatible substances in refrigerator units.The historical origin of carbon lamps (1802 – 1960s)
The Heidelberg experiments
In September 1988 a young volunteering student, Bernd Wagner, joined the "Dust Group" of astrophysicist Hugo Fechtig, director at Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics, for a few weeks. There, under the supervision of Fechtig's assistant Wolfgang Krätschmer Wagner had been performing such carbon vapour experiments using the contact arc method when he accidentally changed the pressure conditions. As a result, he received traces of carbon dust with additional weak IR absorption features unknown to him. However, the result was not considered further, when Wagner left, but was deemed "impurities from pump oil" or simply "junk".In January 1989 Fostiropoulos joined Fechtig's group, where he picked up the "accidental" experiment. After a few weeks assessment period he decided to study as part of his Ph.D. the three kinds of thermal evaporation processes in detail and, subsequently, he developed new process parameters for each. Accordingly, in 1989 Fostiropoulos was the first to synthesize C60 the first molecular carbon modification applying initially a contact arc process with specific experimental conditions for fast electrode degradation, hence, accelerated carbon evaporation.
Moreover, he developed a method to sinter graphite rods from commercially available "amorphous" 13C carbon dust. Applying a resistive heating process and using such "isotopic" graphite rods, a few days before New Year's Eve 1989, he synthesized for the first time an unusual material which contained an exotic species: "isotopic" 13C60, From that he proved the existence of an all-carbon molecule with icosahedral "platonic" symmetry and truncated icosahedron "archimedean" shape, i.e. that of Kroto et al. 1985 predicted football molecule: C60 "Buckminsterfullerene"
In his effort to push the production yield further he then focused his research on the simple arc method that culminated in 1990 in a yield of > 1 gram per day achieved by a robust and highly efficient arc process.
As the fullerene material, however, was still embedded in the generated soot Fostiropoulos developed two possible extraction methods, either by applying thermal evaporation to expel the molecular species C60, C70...
from the soot under vacuum conditions or by dispersing the soot in benzene where only fullerenes dissolve. The extracted powder of this "natural" pure fullerene mixture was analyzed by optical as well as mass spectroscopy where also the "American football" shaped C70 was found. From the powder he could grow for the first time ultra-thin C60 films by vacuum thermal evaporation and watch the formation of hexagonal crystals from the "wine-red" benzene solution. From subsequent thin film chromatography studies the wine-red colour turned out to originate from the 10% C70 fraction in the natural fullerene mixture. The mass density of the novel Carbon crystals was determined experimentally as well as theoretically using data from a TEM crystal analysis measured for the first time in collaboration with, EMBL Heidelberg, where the van der Waals diameter of the molecular "football" was determined: dC60= 1.0 nm. In collaboration with Hans Hermann Eysel, Institute of Inorganic Chemistry, Heidelberg University, for the first time Raman spectra of C60 have been measured.
Beginning of 1991 Fostiropoulos had been invited to visit the research group of astrophysicist at the then Université Pierre-et-Marie-Curie, Paris-VI for two months where they performed matrix isolation spectroscopy on C and C ions in cold Ne matrices in order to measure their optical absorptions under quasi-space conditions. Particularly, the positive ion was a potential candidate for the carrier of Diffuse Interstellar Bands as discussed independently by Harry Kroto 1987. An immediate proposal in cooperation with Fostiropoulos submitted by and for one week observing time at the Canada–France–Hawaii Telescope in order to search for C fingerprints in the interstellar medium had been accepted. However, subsequently, the MPIK in Heidelberg rejected its, hence, Fostiropoulos' participation in the search for C in the interstellar medium.
After all, in 1994 the hunt for the spectral fingerprints of the interstellar football provided a first paper where Bernard Foing and Pascale Ehrenfreund identified the molecule as carrier of two diffuse interstellar bands. Their estimation has been confirmed in many other papers that roughly 0.1% of all carbon in the interstellar medium exists as "C60 – a new form of carbon".
With his results on the synthesis, extraction and characterization of fullerenes published 1990 in NATURE and some astrophysical aspects of ionized and hydrogenated C60 which he found in his data Fostiropoulos hastily completed his Ph.D. thesis by the end of 1991
that has been triggering waves of publications worldwide since then.