CNN
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The 2023 Nobel Prize in chemistry has been awarded to a trio of scientists who worked to discover and develop quantum dots, used in LED lights and TV screens, as well as by surgeons when removing cancer tissue.
The prize was won by Moungi Bawendi, Louis Brus and Alexei Ekimov, the Nobel committee for chemistry announced in Stockholm on Wednesday.
“For a long time, nobody thought you could ever actually make such small particles. But this year’s laureates succeeded,” said Johan Aqvist, chair of the committee.
The scientists were lauded as “pioneers in the exploration of the nanoworld” – in which matter starts to be measured in millionths of a millimeter. At this level, strange phenomena start to occur called “quantum effects.”
Quantum dots consist of just a few thousand atoms. In terms of size, one quantum dot is to a soccer ball as a soccer ball is to the Earth.
When light is passed through quantum dots they emit a specific color. This can be finely tuned and is determined by the size of the dots. The bigger dots glow red, while the smallest glow green or blue.
The slightest of changes in the size of the particle can change its hue right across the spectrum of the color wheel.
“We can tune these dots to fluoresce at any color that a given application requires,” Michael Edelman, CEO of UK-based quantum manufacturer Nanoco, told CNN.
The laureates’ work has allowed scientists to capitalize on some of the properties of the nanoworld, and quantum dots are now found in living rooms and operating theaters across the world.
They are now widely used in TVs and have several advantages over traditional LCD panels, creating more vibrant and accurate colors, as well as requiring less energy to operate.
The dots are also widely used in medical diagnostics. Doctors use them to illuminate molecules that can bind themselves to cancer tumors, allowing the surgeon to distinguish the healthy tissue from the diseased.
The Nobel committee explained how the scientists’ work had helped develop quantum dots.
In the 1980s, Ekimov created size-dependent quantum effects in colored glass. “The color came from nanoparticles of copper chloride and Ekimov demonstrated that the particle size affected the color of the glass via quantum effects,” the committee said.
A few years later, Brus became the first scientist to prove size-dependent quantum effects in particles floating freely in a liquid.
In 1993, Bawendi then changed the chemical production of quantum dots, resulting in what the committee called “almost perfect particles.” This development allowed the dots to be used in applications.
Bawendi, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Brus, professor emeritus at Columbia University, are American. Ekimov is Russian and works for Nanocrystals Technology Inc.
The deliberations of the Nobel committee are usually shrouded in total secrecy. No shortlists for the Nobel prizes are revealed and the winners are called shortly before the official announcement.
But the chemistry committee inadvertently published the name of the winning trio before the official announcement on Wednesday.
Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet published a copy of an email it said was from the academy, Reuters reported. Aqvist told Reuters ahead of the announcement that the email had been a “mistake” and stressed that a final decision had not been made. But hours later, the leaked names were confirmed as laureates.
“Let me say that this is of course, very unfortunate. We deeply regret what happened for sure,” Hans Ellegren, secretary general of Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, said at the announcement ceremony.
“There was a press release sent out for still unknown reasons. We have been very active this morning to trying to find out what actually happened but at this place, we don’t know that. we deeply regret that this happened. The important thing is that it did not affect the awarding of the prize.”
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