A tablet shows this year's laureates, U.S. chemist Moungi Bawendi, U.S. chemist Louis Brus and Russian physicist Alexei Ekimov, during the announcement of the winners of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, in Stockholm, on Oct. 4.JONATHAN NACKSTRAND/AFP/Getty Images
Three researchers who pioneered the study of “quantum dots” – tiny clusters of atoms that are important for a range of applications from television screens to renewable energy – have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Moungi Bawendi, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Louis Brus of Columbia University in New York, and Alexei Ekimov, a Russian physicist based in the United States, were named this year’s winners of the chemistry prize by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm on Wednesday.
Collectively, all are known for their contributions to the discovery and synthesis of semiconductor crystals that measure only one billionth of a metre across and may contain only a few hundred atoms. At that scale, the materials exhibit quantum properties and can be used, for example, to produce light at specific frequencies that are tuned by the size of the crystal.
Since their initial discovery four decades ago, quantum dots have found their way into commercial products, most notably organic LED television screens and in biomedical imaging. They have also been actively explored for their potential future applications to a wider array of technologies, including in the development of more efficient solar panels.
“The scientific discovery, and commercial impact, of quantum dots, carries a broader message – through science and engineering at the nanoscale, materials continue to surprise us,” said Edward Sargent, a Canadian scientist and engineer who specializes in the use of nanomaterials at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., and is also affiliated with the University of Toronto.
“This message is directly relevant to present-day challenges, such as the climate crisis,” Dr. Sargent said.
The science of quantum dots is based on the principle in quantum physics that fundamental particles such as electrons have wavelike properties at very small scales. When they are confined into volumes that are comparable in size to their wavelength, the energy they can release depends on the precise dimensions of the volume that contains them. That means an electron trapped inside a quantum dot will give off light of a specific frequency that depends on the size of the dot.
In 1979, Dr. Ekimov began studying the phenomenon when he was a researcher at the Vavilov State Optical Institute, a Russian research centre in Soviet-era St. Petersburg. His work showed that quantum effects were a feature of small nanoparticles suspended in glass.
Unaware of this discovery, Dr. Brus, who was then at AT&T Bell Laboratories in New Jersey, and colleagues observed similar effects in tiny crystals that were suspended in a solution. Their work in the early 1980s set the stage for further exploration in the field.
Then, in 1993, Dr. Bawendi at MIT pioneered a method for synthesizing quantum dots of specific size and high optical quality. This paved the way for a made-to-order nanomaterial that could be tested and applied to a range of situations.
“It’s a field with a lot of people that have that have contributed to it from the beginning,” said Dr. Bawendi when he spoke with media by phone following the announcement. “I didn’t think that it would be me that would get this prize. You know, we’re all working together on this.”
According to the Nobel Foundation’s statutes, there can only be three recipients at most of the prize, currently valued at $1.3-million.
Wednesday’s announcement was unusual and a source of some embarrassment for officials because the names of the winners were revealed by the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet, apparently hours before the committee appointed to select this year’s chemistry laureates was to have reached its final decision.
“There was a press release sent out, for still unknown reasons. We have been very active this morning trying to find out what actually happened,” said Hans Ellegren, secretary-general of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Dr. Bawendi said that he had not been aware of the leak and only learned of his win when he was awoken by a call from the committee.
The announcement rounds out the three Nobel science prizes for 2023. On Monday a trio of scientists involved in the development of mRNA vaccines for COVID-19 received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. The Nobel Prize in Physics was announced on Tuesday and recognized scientists involved in the development of fast-pulsed lasers for probing the movements of electrons within molecules.