TV screen crystals won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for quantum dots

Three scientists have been granted the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their contributions to the creation of quantum dots.

It’s possible that people have seen these microscopic crystals in their QLED TVs, where the nanoparticles produce color.

They are also utilized in solar panels, better cancer medication targeting, and medical imaging to direct surgeons.

The winners, Alexei I. Ekimov, Louis E. Brus, and Moungi G. Bawendi, will split the 11 million Swedish krona (£824,000) award.

A press release from Sweden’s Royal Academy of Sciences unintentionally revealed their identities hours before the formal announcement on Wednesday morning.

The Academy stated that it was investigating the reason behind the names’ early distribution. “This is regrettable, of course. We sincerely apologize for what transpired,” the academy’s secretary-general declared.

He maintained that the choice of the victors was not finalized until the.

He added that he had not heard the news prior to the Academy calling him, saying he was “very surprised, sleepy, shocked, and very honoured”.

With a diameter of only a few millionths of a millimeter, quantum dots are incredibly small. These are a synthetic set of semiconducting nanoparticles that, in response to light, glow red, blue, or green.

When supplied energy, the precise size of the object determines the color of light it emits. The colors in between are produced by the middle-sized quantum dots, which release lower energy waves to make red light, and the tiniest quantum dots, which release higher energy waves to produce blue light.

The Academy stated that “for a long time nobody thought you could make such small particles,” yet this year’s winners did precisely that.