The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced on October 4 that it has awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Munji Bavendi, Louis Bruce and Alexei Yekimov for their contributions to the discovery and synthesis of quantum dots. Hans Ellergren, permanent secretary of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, announced the winners and their major achievements at the Royal Academy Conference Hall on the same day. This year's chemistry prize-winning research "sowed important seeds" for nanotechnology, he said. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in a press release on the same day that quantum dots are a class of very small nano-scale particles. It has long been theoretically known that size-dependent quantum effects can occur in nanoparticles, but in the past, when it was difficult to make nanoparticles, few believed that the theory could be applied in practice. This year's winners invented and improved techniques for making quantum dots in the 1980s and 1990s. Today, quantum dots "illuminate" computer monitors and TV screens based on QLED (quantum dot light-emitting diode) technology, and they add nuance to the light of some LED (light-emitting diode) lamps, which are also used by biochemists and doctors to map biological tissue. John Oquist, chairman of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, said: "Quantum dots have many fascinating and unusual properties. What's important is that they have different colors depending on their size." The communique says quantum dots are bringing many benefits to humanity. The researchers believe that in the future they could be used in flexible electronics, tiny sensors, thinner solar cells and encrypted quantum communications. According to reports, Barvendi was born in France in 1961, is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Bruce was born in 1943 in the United States and is a professor at Columbia University. Yekimov, born in 1945 in the Soviet Union, is the former chief scientist of nanocrystal Technology in the United States. Bavendi said in a telephone interview on the same day that he was surprised by the award, "completely unexpected" and felt honored by it.
The three winners will split the 11 million Swedish kronor (about $1 million) prize.
