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Three scientists have won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their development of “quantum dots”, tiny nanoparticles with many applications in electronics ranging from display screens to medical technology.
Moungi Bawendi from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Louis Brus of New York’s Columbia University and Alexei Ekimov of Nanocrystals Technology, a small US tech company, share the SKr11mn ($1mn) prize.
Quantum dots are semiconductor materials a few nanometres (millions of a millimetre) wide whose properties, particularly their colour, are influenced by their extremely small size.
“These tiny particles have unique properties and now spread their light from television screens and LED lamps. They catalyse chemical reactions,” said the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in its Nobel citation. It pointed out that their clear light can mark and illuminate tumour tissue for surgeons, for example.
The trio began the research that led to their awards several decades ago. Working independently in the 1980s, Ekimov at the SI Vavilov State Optical Institute in the Soviet Union and Brus at Bell Laboratories in the US discovered that the colours emitted by nanoparticles depended on their size. As they became smaller, they changed from red through yellow and green to blue.
Then in the 1990s, Bawendi at MIT revolutionised the chemical production of quantum dots, resulting in the development of particles suitable for practical applications.
By recognising these advances in the science of ultra-small particles, the chemistry prize announced on Wednesday echoed the physics prize the previous day, awarded to three researchers who discovered how to generate extremely short light pulses.
The chemistry award is the third of this year’s six Nobel Prizes to be announced. Two researchers received the medicine prize on Monday for discoveries leading to mRNA vaccines. Laureates in literature, peace and economics will be announced in the coming week.
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