Nobel Prize awarded for quantum dots to a graduate of Leningrad University

On Wednesday, October 4, in Stockholm, representatives of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced the decision to award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2023. The laureates were Munji Bavendi, Luis Brus and our compatriot working in the USA, Alexey Ekimov – for the discovery and development of quantum dots.

The award found heroes for the discovery and development of quantum dots – as the Nobel Prize website explains, these tiny particles have unique properties and now radiate light from television screens and LED lamps. They catalyze chemical reactions, and their bright light can illuminate tumor tissue for the surgeon.

The 2023 Nobel laureates in chemistry have succeeded in creating particles so small that their properties are determined by quantum phenomena. Particles called quantum dots are currently of great importance in nanotechnology.

“Quantum dots have many interesting and unusual properties. It is important to note that they have different colors depending on their size,” says Johan Oquist, Chairman of the Nobel Committee on Chemistry.

Physicists have long known that size-dependent quantum effects could theoretically occur in nanoparticles, but at the time it was virtually impossible to create nanoscale sculptures. Therefore, few people believed that this knowledge would find practical application.

However, in the early 1980s, Alexey Ekimov succeeded in creating size-dependent quantum effects in colored glass. The color was produced by copper chloride nanoparticles, and Ekimov demonstrated that particle size influences the color of glass through quantum effects.

A few years later, Louis Bruce became the first scientist in the world to demonstrate quantum effects that depend on the size of particles floating freely in a liquid.

In 1993, Munji Bawendi revolutionized the chemical production of quantum dots, resulting in nearly perfect particles. Such high quality was necessary for their practical use.

Quantum dots now illuminate computer monitors and TV screens based on QLED technology. They also add nuance to the light of some LED lamps, and biochemists and doctors use them to map biological tissues.

Thus, quantum dots bring the greatest benefit to humanity. Researchers believe that in the future they could contribute to flexible electronics, tiny sensors, thinner solar cells and encrypted quantum communication – which is why we’ve only just begun to explore the potential of these tiny particles.

Let us note that a graduate of the Faculty of Physics of Leningrad State University, Aleksey Ivanovich Ekimov, is known as the discoverer of nanocrystalline semiconductor quantum dots, who carried out pioneering studies of their electronic and optical properties. In an announcement from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, it is affiliated with Nanocrystals Technology Inc.

On the eve of the announcement of the “verdict” of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, experts, as traditionally happens, tried to predict who might become this year’s Nobel Prize laureate in chemistry.

At the same time, many forecasters rely on the citation index of possible Nobel laureates. Web of Science website Clarivate released its 2023 citation honorees in September. In chemistry, the analytics company highlighted James J. Collins, Michael Elowitz and Stanislas Leibler “for their pioneering work on synthetic gene circuits,” Shankar Balasubramanian and David Klenerman “for co-inventing next-generation DNA sequencing methodology,” and Kazunori Kataoka, Vladimir Torchilin and Karen L. Wooley “for the development of innovative drugs and methods for gene targeting and delivery.”

Last year, Caroline Bertozzi, Morten Meldahl and Barry Sharpless became Nobel laureates – “for the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry.” American researcher Barry Sharpless and the Dane Morten Meldahl laid the foundation for a functional form of chemistry – the so-called click chemistry, in which molecular the building blocks fit together quickly and efficiently. And Caroline Bertozzi took click chemistry to a new level and began using it in living organisms. Interestingly, Barry Sharpless had already won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2001, sharing the prize with Ryoji Noyori and William Knowles “for research used in the pharmaceutical industry.”

The first Nobel laureate in chemistry was the Dutchman Jacob Hendrik van’t Hoff. Since then, from 1901 to 2021, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded 113 times, with 189 people receiving it during this period. About half (63 times) of the times the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to a single laureate, and about the same number of times the award was awarded to two (25 times) and three (26 times) scientists.

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry is accompanied by a gold medal and a cash award of 10 million kronor (more than 1.1 million US dollars). The statutes of the Nobel Foundation state that the amount of the prize can be divided equally between two works, each of which is considered to be awarded the prize: “If the work awarded is created by two or three people, the prize is awarded to them jointly. Under no circumstances may the prize amount be divided between more than three people.”

The first person to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry twice was Frederick Sanger, who was awarded the prize in 1958 and 1980. Among the awarded chemists there are other “twice Nobels”: for example, the American chemist and activist Linus Pauling received the Nobel in chemistry in 1954, and eight years later the Peace Prize), and Marie Curie, in addition to the “chemical” award, also received and a prize in physics.

The average age of Nobel laureates in chemistry is 58 years. The youngest recipient is still considered to be 35-year-old Frédéric Joliot, who received the prize together with his wife Irène Joliot-Curie in 1935. And the oldest laureate in 2019 was 97-year-old American scientist John Goodenough.

As with the physics award, the chemistry Nobel remains a predominantly male award. The female chemists awarded include Marie Curie, her daughter Irène Joliot-Curie, Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, Ada Yonath and 2018 honoree Frances Arnold. And in 2020, two women won the Nobel in chemistry – French researcher in the field of microbiology, genetics and biochemistry Emmanuelle Charpentier and American biochemist Jennifer Doudna – for the development of the genome editing method. But in 2022, the “female regiment” among Nobel chemists arrived – at the expense of Caroline Bertozzi.