After this morning’s miss by the Royal Academy of Sciences, KVA, this year’s Nobel laureate in chemistry did not come as a surprise.
The trio Moungi G. Bawendi, Louis E. Brus and Alexei I. Ekimov are awarded this year’s prize for the discovery and development of quantum dots, nanoparticles so small that their size controls their properties.
They are used, among other things, in television screens and LED lamps.
Alexei Ekimov started it all in the early 1980s. He succeeded in creating size-dependent quantum effects in colored glass, where he was able to show that the size of the particles affected the color of the glass via so-called quantum effects.
Soon after, the next laureate, Louis Brus, was able to show for the first time size-dependent quantum effects in particles floating freely in liquid.
Moungi Bawendi, in turn, took a necessary step for the quantum dots to become practically useful when in 1993 he “revolutionized” chemical manufacturing and managed to produce quantum dots of almost perfect quality, according to KVA.
You can follow the announcement here.