Yasemin Saplakoglu in Quanta:
Imagine a nanocrystal so minuscule that it behaves like an atom. Moungi G. Bawendi, Louis E. Brus and Alexei I. Ekimov have been awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering a category of such minute marvels, now known as quantum dots, and for developing a precise method of synthesizing them. Quantum dots are already playing important roles in electronics and in biomedicine, such as in drug delivery, imaging and medical diagnoses, and have more promising applications in the future, the Nobel Committee for Chemistry said in its announcement of the prize.
Quantum dots, sometimes called artificial atoms, are precise nanocrystals made of silicon and other semiconductor materials that are just a few nanometers wide — small enough to exhibit quantum properties just as individual atoms do, although they are a hundred to a few thousand atoms in size.
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