Work on tiny dots that light up TV screens and help doctors see the blood vessels that feed tumors has earned three scientists the 2023 Nobel Prize in chemistry.
Chemist Moungi Bawendi, chemist Louis Brus and physicist Alexei Ekimov split the prize for the discovery and synthesis of quantum dots, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced October 4.
“Quantum dots are a new class of materials, different from molecules,” said Heiner Linke, a member of the Nobel committee. Just adjusting the size of these nanoparticles, roughly a few billionths of a meter across, can change their properties — optical, electric, magnetic, even melting points — thanks to quantum mechanics (SN: 6/29/15).
That’s also true of color. “If you want to make different colors with molecules, you would choose a new molecule, a new set of atoms” arranged in a different structure, Linke said. But quantum dots of different colors have the exact same arrangement of atoms. The only difference is particle size.
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