page_title: Konstantinos Fostiropoulos
section_title: First scientific career - "fundamental research"
hierarchical_section_title: Konstantinos Fostiropoulos / First scientific career - "fundamental research"
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Die Stadt Heidelberg
context_page_description: 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.
context_section_description: 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.
caption: Beautiful Heidelberg
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