CHEMISTRY PRIZE AWARDED FOR QUANTUM DOTS WORK
Nanoparticles have applications in tech, screens, medicine
The Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded Wednesday to three scientists for their fundamental discoveries in nanotechnology, particles once considered impossibly small to make, with applications in television screens and LED lamps and to instruments that allow doctors to see the vasculature of a tumor.
The prize was given to Moungi Bawendi of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Louis Brus of Columbia University and Alexei Ekimov of Nanocrystals Technology in New York.
The development of nanoparticles, a new class of materials in which changes in size also result in changes in all of the properties of particles, such as color, optical, electrical and even melting point, was first theorized in 1937.
So how small are the particles? Consider how much smaller a soccer ball is than the entire Earth. Quantum dots are that much smaller than the soccer ball. “For a
long time, nobody thought you could make such a small particle,” said Johan Aqvist, the chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry.
But working independently in the early 1980s, first Ekimov and then Brus succeeded. As often happens with scientific discoveries, however, the breakthroughs used cumbersome methods to achieve results that were less than ideal (it was hard to control the size and quality of the particles), but another scientist discovered an elegant method that allowed for widespread use of the technology.
In 1993, Bawendi revolutionized the process, devising a way to create seed, or beginner particles that could then be carefully controlled using temperature. The method allowed him to stop the process to create particles of just the right size and quality. The size of the particles is reflected in their color, which follows a spectrum that starts with red for the smallest, then progressing to violet, orange, yellow and green as they grow bigger.
The Nobel laureates continued the march of nanotechnology, which dates back more than 150 years to the work of the English scientist Michael Faraday, who created the first gold nanoparticles while mounting thin sheets of gold leaf onto microscope slides.
Though the science took decades to refine, the equipment involved is neither costly nor difficult to obtain. Students working in a good high school laboratory can reproduce experiments in nanoscience, said Rigoberto Advincula, a professor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee. Advincula called the Nobel Committee decision a “really good pick” and “long overdue.”
The possibility for the future is that the nanotechnology methods “can be used with artificial intelligence and machine learning to achieve even greater heights,” Advincula added.
The results could include faster ways to make a medical diagnosis or develop the prototypes for new sensors.