Left to proper: Moungi Bawendi, Louis Brus and Alexei Ekimov.
| Photo Credit: Niklas Elmehed/Nobel Prize Outreach
The 2023 Nobel Prize for chemistry has been awarded to Alexei Ekimov, Louis Brus, and Moungi Bawendi for their work on quantum dots – very small crystals with peculiar properties that have discovered software in quite a lot of fields, from new-age LED screens to quantum computer systems.
Earlier within the day, stories emerged that the Nobel Committee had inadvertently revealed the names of the winners in an electronic mail, accessed by the Swedish press, in an uncommon break from a practice during which the id of the laureates stays a intently guarded secret till the announcement.
Quantum dots are crystals just some nanometres extensive, holding just a few thousand atoms. To evaluate, a single grain of sand can maintain round a sextillion atoms. The electrons within the dot’s atoms are very shut to one another, with little wiggle room. At this nanoscale, the consequences of quantum mechanics are extra obvious.
When some mild is shined on a quantum dot, it’s going to take in and re-emit it at a distinct frequency, or color – similar to some atoms. Uniquely, the color is dependent upon the scale of the dot: the smaller the dot, the bluer the color of the re-emitted mild. This relationship between dimension and color is the results of electrons within the atoms leaping from a decrease to the next power degree, earlier than leaping again. The hole between these ranges is dependent upon the scale of the dot.
In the early Eighties, Dr. Ekimov and Dr. Brus (individually) synthesised the primary quantum dots in glass and a liquid, respectively, proving the existence of such crystals and confirming their capacity to fluoresce mild of various colors based mostly on their dimension. But they each had an issue: they couldn’t constantly synthesise high-quality dots.
In 1993, Dr. Bawendi and his staff had the reply. They injected small dollops of a compound into a particular solvent till it was saturated, and heated the answer. The compound quickly started to coalesce into nanocrystals within the liquid, with the solvent itself giving them a easy form. Larger crystals shaped when the answer was heated for longer.
“Quantum dots are … bringing the greatest benefit to humankind, and we have just begun to explore their potential,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences mentioned in a assertion. “Researchers believe that in the future, quantum dots can contribute to flexible electronics, miniscule sensors, slimmer solar cells, and perhaps encrypted quantum communication.”
