Unexpectedly surprised to learn that a Danish chemist has been awarded a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for “snapping together” a quantum dot
Three chemists who predicted and were first to make quantum dots — nanoscale crystals that interact with light in unusual ways — have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
A group of scientists from the US, UK, and Danes received the chemistry prize last year for their work on ” snapping together” small molecule components to explore cells, map DNA, and design drugs that can target diseases.
During a phone call after the press conference, Bawendi offered a flurry of reactions: “very surprised.” Sleepy. Shocked. It was unexpected. And very honored.
In a rare event, the winner’s names were leaked to the Swedish media before the official announcement. “I didn’t hear anything about it because I was sound asleep,” said Bawendi.
The 25th Nobel Prize in physics, chemistry and economics: The selection committee and the announcement of the first two awards to be awarded by a single particle
Murray said that they could find more applications with the fact that producing quantum dots had become a fairly straightforward chemical process. Being able to tune how a particle interacts with light could help engineers to develop low-cost optical detectors and sensors — an important component of autonomous transport, for example. It is possible to add quantum dots to the materials.
On Monday, Hungarian-American Katalin Karikó and American Drew Weissman won the Nobel Prize in medicine for discoveries that enabled the creation of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19.
Officials plan to announce the literature prize on Thursday, followed by the peace prize on Friday. The economics prize will be awarded on October 9.
This year the prize money has increased by 10% to about $1 million. The winners of the award will receive a gold medal and diploma when they collect it at the awards ceremony in December.
The chemistry prize means Nobel season has reached its halfway stage. The prizes in literature, peace and economics follow, with one announcement every weekday until Oct. 9.
A committee for each prize then discusses candidates in a series of meetings throughout the year. When the process is over, the committee presents at least one proposal to the full academy for a vote. The deliberations, including the names of nominees other than the winners, are kept confidential for 50 years.
On Tuesday, the physics prize went to French-Swedish physicist Anne L’Huillier, French scientist Pierre Agostini and Hungarian-born Ferenc Krausz for producing the first split-second glimpse into the superfast world of spinning electrons.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which awards the physics, chemistry and economics prizes, asks for nominations a year in advance from thousands of university professors and other scholars around the world.
Tiny ‘quantum dot’ particles win chemistry Nobel: from Brus and Bawendi to a new generation of semiconductors
“These tiny particles have unique properties and now spread their light from television screens and LED lamps. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said that they could illuminate the tumor tissue for a surgeon with clear light.
“It’s an amazing result for the quantum-dot community,” says Mark Green, a physicist at King’s College London. The now-mature science sprang from the theoretical framework provided by Brus and Ekimov, as well as the seminal paper of Bawendi in 1993.
The first reports of observing light effects in coloured glasses were made by Ekimov in the early 1980’s. Two years later, Brus described making quantum dots in a solution, while looking at semiconducting particles for solar-energy applications2. Green says that Brus made a link between particle size and semiconductors. But “it would have remained a relatively inaccessible and poorly developed materials system until Bawendi developed the chemistry”.
“If you want every atom to count and to be able to do it in a scalable manner, then a chemist’s approach is a very valuable one,” says Christopher Murray, a chemist at University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia who was a PhD student working with Bawendi at the time and co-author of the 1993 paper. He says he was really happy to hear the news, having woken up oblivious to the controversy over the leak.
The platform for quantum computing seeks to harness quantum phenomena to perform calculations that would be impossible with an ordinary computer. Researchers can fabricate devices with the properties of quantum dots on a silicon chip, and then manipulate the spin of individual electrons trapped in them. “Both types of quantum dots are small, and confinement of electrons in the quantum dots leads to quantized orbitals, like in atoms,” says Lieven Vandersypen, a physicist at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands.
Source: Tiny ‘quantum dot’ particles win chemistry Nobel
Identifying contributions to the discovery of Ekimov’s Nobel prize in Russia and Belarus, as revealed by an emailed press conference
In late August, the Nobel Foundation announced that it would be inviting ambassadors from Russia and Belarus to the Nobel prize award ceremony in December. Days later, it reversed the decision, following an angry public reaction. When asked whether Russian-born Ekimov will be able to accept his award in person, Hans Ellegren, secretary-general of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, told the press conference that when it comes to selecting for the Nobel prize, “we simply follow the procedure of identifying the most important discoveries. We identified the most important contributors to those findings.