This year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry goes to Moungi G. Bawendi (1961), Louis E. Brus (1943) and Alexei I. Ekimov (1945) for the discovery and synthesis of quantum dots. Quantum dots are semiconductor particles that are so small that their size determines their properties. The particles have a different color according to their size, and similarly they also differ in other electrical, optical and magnetic properties.
It is striking that the names of the laureates were leaked early this morning via the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet, who had picked it up from an email. That has never happened before in the long tradition of the Nobel Prizes, and an embarrassment for the Nobel Committee, which even kept the list of nominees secret for fifty years.
The prize awarded today is for exceptionally current research. The knowledge of quantum dots already has many applications, ranging from QLED screens and LED lamps, to solar panels and biomedical detection methods.
Breakthrough
Alexei Ekimov laid the foundation for this field in the early 1980s with the discovery of particle size-dependent quantum effects in colored glass. A few years later, Louis Brus demonstrated these quantum effects in particles in a solution. In 1993, Moungi Bawendi made a breakthrough in the production of quantum dots, designing a method that allows particles of a certain size to be formed very precisely. That precision is crucial for quantum dots, because their size determines their properties.
The three laureates share the Nobel Prize money – 11 million Swedish crowns, equivalent to 950,000 euros.
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