How does the Kuban scientist Dmitry Lopatin live after the scandal with the accusation of smuggling a psychotropic substance
The young Krasnodar inventor Dmitry Lopatin is known all over the world today. Since 2010, he has been developing a printer for printing perovskite solar cells - a new generation of batteries. The 26-year-old scientist invented the technology of spraying perovskite onto glass and plastic. Thanks to this technology, the solar panel can be used as a roof covering, window glass or even a material for the exterior of a house. The uniqueness of the Lopatin printer is that the uniformity of the deposition of spraying on it is higher than on many analogues developed in the USA and Australia.
Liter through the "Russian Post"
In 2014, Dmitry urgently needed a solvent for testing. He was looking for the least toxic, since the printer was made for industrial production. I read a lot of scientific articles and settled on gamma-butyrolactone. In China, this substance was sold freely, like we have acetone, so Lopatin calmly ordered a whole liter through the Russian Post, as he ordered many times other reagents necessary for experiments. True, while the package was going from China to Russia, Dmitry no longer needed gamma-butyrolactone - he figured out how to minimize the use of the toxic solvent he had in his possession when printing solar cells.
So, having received the customs notice, the very busy young man took his time to pick up the package from China. But after some time, Lopatin was called from the post office, begged to come and pick up the parcel: allegedly the customs threatened with fines. At the post office, the scientist was met by a customs inspector and demanded to describe the properties of the substance arrived from China, explain whether it was psychotropic or not. Dmitry replied that the substance is not toxic, but whether it is psychotropic, he could not say.
A criminal case was opened against Lopatin. The Prikubanskiy District Court of Krasnodar found the scientist guilty under Part 3 of Article 30, Part 2 of Article 228 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (attempted illegal acquisition without the purpose of selling psychotropic substances on a large scale), sentencing him to three years probation. But at least the charges of smuggling (part 3 of Article 229.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) were dropped from Dmitry. The state prosecution asked for 11 years in prison, announced its intention to appeal against the too lenient sentence. However, the wave of publications in defense of Dmitry that arose on the Internet and the media forced the prosecutor's office to change its decision. Lopatin was left alone.
Now Dmitry's criminal record has been removed, he is clean before the law. But people, on the wave of interest raised by the media, are all speculating about how Dmitry lives, what he is doing after the trials, whether he has decided to emigrate. Therefore, I went to Ust-Labinsk.
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Between Krasnodar and Karlsruhe
To find Lopatin at a certain point on the planet is a great success. Because he is always going somewhere. From Krasnodar - to Goryachiy Klyuch, where he has part of the production. From Krasnodar to Karlsruhe to Germany, where he is setting up an industrial printer at his investor's plant. Sometimes to France, where people are also interested in his developments. Dmitry always has a laptop with him, demonstration samples of solar panels and a bunch of wires and mechanisms incomprehensible to a common man.
Dmitry Lopatin. Photo: Galina Titarenko.
Because of this, at European airports, he often has to explain to the security services. Moreover, these explanations are more like a product presentation. Recently in France, security guards did not like the laptop charger rewound with blue duct tape. According to their rules, you cannot carry modified equipment on the plane. The battery was removed and together with it they took away a whole heap of wires, taking headphones for the kit. Then they figured out that everything that was taken away does not pose any danger, but they did not consider it necessary to apologize - they simply notified: "You can take it."
Lopatin today is the founder of two companies - "Photochem Electronics" and "Nanoprinting". He has a business partner, Oleg Baranov, Lopatin's co-author on a patent for a technology for printing perovskite solar cells.
Last Monday, July 8, Dmitry went to the International Exhibition of Industry and Innovation "Innoprom-2019" in Yekaterinburg to present the products of "Photochem Electronics" to potential investors. Before leaving, I dropped in for half a day in Ust-Labinsk to see my parents - to pick up the instruments necessary for the exhibition from the home laboratory, including the head from the printer on which solar panels are printed. Traditionally, there were some adventures. On July 9, the exhibition was visited by Russian President Vladimir Putin. On this occasion, heightened security measures are always taken. And here is the scientist Lopatin with his very strange part from the printer with red and blue wires. Of course, they called in the explosives. The part was seized, carefully checked and only then returned to the owner.
On the move, the scientist often spends the night wherever he has to, sometimes even in a tent in the forest. And once he even slept on the floor in the underground parking. It was the day after he was shown all over the country on TV in the front row at a meeting with Putin at a forum on Seliger. From Seliger, the guy came to Moscow. On foot from the station I got to my friend in the Moscow City area. But on the way he was very tired and, without hesitation, spent the night right on his own jacket on the floor of the underground parking.
Investor, find
In any India, as many write, the Russian Kulibin did not emigrate. In 2015 he graduated from postgraduate studies at the Department of Radiophysics and Nanotechnology of KubSU, is working on a Ph. D. thesis. It is trying to develop its own production of solar panels in Russia, but investors are still not in their homeland. Dmitry was once invited to a meeting with one of the top hundred oligarchs. But the cooperation did not grow together. The oligarch said that he would not risk investing in Russian companies, but promised to follow Lopatin's success.
There is no confidence in the German investor either. Dmitry does not feel like his own in Germany and fears that the project may be curtailed as suddenly as it was launched. The German industrialist himself found Lopatin in 2016, after reading an article about him in the magazine Der Spiegel, and offered cooperation with his company RIVA Engineering, located near Stuttgart. Construction company, manufactures facades for buildings. The task given to Dmitry is to install an industrial printer and start the production of solar panels.
In order for the Russian scientist to have a livelihood, the owner of the company made him a full-time employee of RIVA Engineering with a salary of 2 thousand euros, and pays for housing. But Lopatin still sorely lacks money, given the costs of scientific work and the need to live in two countries - Russia and Germany.
Dmitry Lopatin in an archive photograph. Photo: Galina Titarenko.
Before the criminal case on a psychotropic reagent, funds for science were a little better. The young scientist received grants for the development of his projects. This gave some confidence in the future. Dmitry became a semi-finalist of the Zvorykin Prize, the winner of the Energy of Youth competition in 2012 by the Global Energy Association, and won the Energy of the Future and Russia Power competitions. In addition, Rossiyskaya Gazeta wrote that Lopatin was the only representative from Russia at the Hello Tomorrow international summit of science and technology entrepreneurship in Paris. There, his invention was included in the list of one hundred best world projects, attracting the interest of such an industrial giant as the Shell concern. But after a loud story with accusations of smuggling a psychotropic substance with grants, Lopatin has problems.
Dmitry, for example, won a grant from the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, but the money went to the account of his university, KubSU. And there, having learned about the criminal case, the grant was quickly sent back. Despite the fact that the scientist completed the work on the grant.
Also in June 2018, the FGBI Fund for Assistance to the Development of Small Forms of Enterprises in the Scientific and Technical Sphere applied to the Moscow Arbitration Court with a claim against Lopatin's company "Photochem Electronics" to recover 475 thousand rubles. But the case was closed by agreement of the parties.
On a par with Deripaska
Now only his parents help Lopatin. Every penny earned goes to support his son's scientific research. Lopatin elders live modestly, they build a house with their own hands. And they believe that difficulties will end someday.
Mom wants her son to stay to work in Europe, since in Russia, in her opinion, no one needs scientists. The father, on the contrary, believes that Dima should find himself in Russia.
The senior Lopatin are physics engineers. We moved to Kuban from Donetsk, before that we lived in Kharkov for several years. We left Kharkov for Donetsk when Dima was three years old. In 1991, they decided to leave Donetsk. There Dmitry's father, Sergei Vasilievich, worked at the mine. When the pressure on the Russian-speaking population of Donbass became too strong, the Lopatin family decided to move to Ust-Labinsk, where the parents of Dmitry's mother, Irina Lvovna, lived.
Of course, the two physicists in the provincial Ust-Labinsk had nowhere to work. Both mother and father Dmitry were forced to change professions. But nevertheless, the son was supported in every possible way in his passion for science, secretly dreaming that Dima would become a famous scientist.
Dmitry Lopatin with his mother. Photo: Galina Titarenko.
Sergei Vasilievich in the nineties assembled a real computer with his own hands. Then it was something from the realm of fantasy. Then he helped his son to design devices. At the age of 15, Dima became seriously interested in chemistry and ecology, prepared a report on the need to recycle waste. In short, he began to justify the efforts of his parents. In high school, he was a scholar of the Oleg Deripaska Foundation - he, being from Ust-Labinsk, helps his fellow countrymen. Every month a talented student received 4,000 rubles, which supported the family and stimulated the boy. Then Dima won the regional physics Olympiad and was able to enter the Physics and Technology Faculty of KubSU without exams.
The guy wanted to study where there is a good technical base. So I got hold of the email addresses of several academics and wrote letters to them. One of the addressees answered. Dima entered his department. In many ways, this teacher determined the current fate of Lopatin. He collaborated with the famous Krasnodar company Saturn, which produced solar panels for the space industry. And he helped a promising student get a job at the plant. It was there that Dima realized that the future belongs to autonomous power sources. Perovskite as a component for the production of solar cells began to be actively investigated around 2009. The substance worked great, was inexpensive, but the efficiency showed low compared to widespread silicon solar cells - only 10-13%. Therefore, various scientists around the world have worked and are working to this day precisely to increase the efficiency of perovskite solar cells. Lopatin is one of them.
Today Dmitry is completely absorbed in his project. He is talented and purposeful. He has a loyal team of like-minded people - the same young scientists Oleg Baranov and chemist Elizaveta Korzhova. So the project will sooner or later succeed, there is no doubt about it. The only question is one - in Russia or in the West?
By the way, at school in his native Ust-Labinsk, among the photos of famous graduates, a photo of Dima Lopatin hangs next to a photo of Oleg Deripaska. Dmitry dreams that someday they will meet in real life and Deripaska, what the hell is not kidding, decides to invest in Lopatin's project in Russia.
Author: Galina Titarenko