The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to scientists Moungi Bawendi, Louis Brus, and Aleksey Ekimov in 2023 for their discovery of tiny atom clusters known as quantum dots. These quantum dots are now widely used to produce colours in flat screens, light-emitting diode (LED) lamps, and tools that allow surgeons to see blood vessels in tumours.
The three American scientists’ study on quantum dots, which in size have the same difference as between a football & Earth, have “added colour to nanotechnology,” according to the awarding academy.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences bestows the more than a century-old award, which is worth $1 million or 11 million Swedish crowns. “Researchers believe that in the future they could contribute to flexible electronics, tiny sensors, thinner solar cells and encrypted quantum communication,” the academy said in a statement.
According to Johan Aqvist, Chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, one of the “fascinating and unusual properties” of quantum dots is that they change light colour depending on particle size while maintaining the same atomic structure.
The prize, according to Bawendi, made him feel “very surprised, sleepy, shocked, unexpected and very honoured.” It was so unexpected, according to Brus, that he didn’t answer the first six phone calls he got from individuals trying to tell him the news.
The academy appears to have accidentally released the names of the award recipients earlier on Wednesday. “It was very unfortunate that the press release got out, and we still don’t know why it happened,” said Hans Ellegren, secretary general of the academy. It didn’t change the decision, he continued.
The early 1980s work by Ekimov served as the foundation for the quantum dot technology that facilitated high-definition QLED TVs produced by Samsung, Sony, or TCL.
In a news briefing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he is a professor, Bawendi remarked, “I could never have thought you could make these things at such a large commercial scale.”
Ekimov made a groundbreaking discovery when he realised that sub-atomic forces were at work and that the size of the copper chloride molecules in glass affects its hue.
Ekimov, 78, who was born in the Soviet Union and subsequently resided in the United States, spoke over the phone with Reuters and expressed his awe at the most recent advances in flat-screen technology, which he could not foresee when working in the 1980s. “Remember what a TV was back then!” he said, laughing.
Brus expanded the study to include small particles suspended in liquids a few years later. In a conversation with a reporter at his Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, home, Brus said, “It’s a collaborative effort. There’s not a single ‘eureka!’ moment.”
Bawendi changed quantum dot manufacture and enhanced their quality in 1993. The study made it possible for LEDs to glow more like sunshine, eliminating the blue light they were previously despised for, among other applications.
Both Brus and Ekimov are based in New York; Brus is an emeritus professor at Columbia University, while Ekimov works at Nanocrystals Technology Inc.
In 1972, Brus was employed by AT&T Bell Labs, where he worked for 23 years, spending a lot of that time on nanocrystals. “It’s not that I’m a genius, I’m very far from being a genius. But what’s important is to try to find the problem that other people don’t realize is important and aren’t working on,” he said.
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry is the third of this year’s prizes; the other two were revealed this week for physics and medicine.
