The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2023 has been awarded to Moungi G. Bawendi, Louis E. Brus, and Alexei I. Ekimov for their pioneering work on quantum dots. Quantum dots are nanocrystals just a few nanometers in size that exhibit unique optical and electronic properties due to quantum confinement effects. In the early 1980s, Ekimov and Brus independently discovered that the optical absorption of semiconductor nanoparticles shifts to blue wavelengths as the particles shrink in size below 10 nm. This demonstrated that quantum confinement alters the fundamental properties of materials at the nanoscale. In 1993, Bawendi revolutionized quantum dot production by developing a simple, scalable method to synthesize high-quality dots with precisely controlled sizes. Thanks to these advances, quantum dots are now used in diverse applications including QLED displays, LED lighting, biomedical imaging, and catalysis. The laureates’ foundational work opened up the new field of nanoscience and enabled the real-world exploitation of quantum phenomena, underscoring how quantum effects can provide powerful new tools when materials are engineered at the nanoscale. Their discoveries established quantum dots as an important class of nanoparticles with properties that can be precisely tuned through size control.
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