MCI wish to congratulate, the scientists Moungi Bawendi, Louis Brus and Aleksey Ekimov for winning the 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their discovery and development of quantum dots on the 4th October. For those of you who are not familiar with quantum dots, they are semiconductor nanocrystals. The dots are only a few nanometres in size and, because of their tiny size and quantum mechanical effects, they have different electrical and optical properties than bigger particles. This has big news for material chemistry and nanotechnology, but other than exciting scientists, what does that really mean for us?
Well, when the quantum dots are exposed to UV light, they create photoluminescence. Not only that, but the colours change depending on the energy difference between the conductance band and the valence band, or the transition between discrete energy states when the band structure is no longer well-defined in quantum dots. Blue for smaller nanoparticles and red for the larger with various other colours in between. Please note that this is a very simplistic description of quantum dots.
Although the discovery of quantum dots is not a new thing (thought to be theoretically possible since 1937) no one thought that they could have a practical and commercial application. Nowadays, many of you may be sitting watching a QLED TV this evening. The Q stands for quantum dot, Which turns the base colour (blue) to the three other primary colours required to make the TV colour range. Quantum dots are used in some LED lamps, to create daylight or warm colours and in medicine to track tumours in the body by attaching the dots to the tumour tissue. Quantum dots can also be used by chemists as catalysts to encourage chemical reactions to occur. This is clearly a field where we have only scratched the surface of possible uses of quantum dots.
Have a great weekend everyone!