Konstantinos Fostiropoulos, Date of Birth, Place of Birth

Konstantinos Fostiropoulos

Date of Birth: 20-Jun-1960

Place of Birth: Krya Vrysi, Pella, Decentralized Administration of Macedonia and Thrace, Greece

Profession: scientist

Zodiac Sign: Gemini

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 achieving a then world record power conversion efficiency of 2.5% for such devices. He has also been an expert in distance education who demonstrated in 1999 an experimental low band width connectivity transatlantic internet teaching platform.