Nobel Chemistry Prize Awarded for ‘Quantum Dots’ That Bring Colored Light to Screens

Permanent Secretary of the Royal Academy of Sciences Hans Ellegren, center, announces the winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, at the Royal Academy of Sciences, in Stockholm, Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2023. The Nobel Prize in physics has been awarded to scientists Moungi Bawendi, Louis Brus and Alexi Ekimov for discovery and synthesis of quantum dots. Claudio Bresciani/TT News Agency via AP

STOCKHOLM—Scientists Moungi Bawendi, Louis Brus, and Aleksey Ekimov won the 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their discovery of tiny clusters of atoms known as quantum dots, widely used today to create colours in flat screens, light emitting diode (LED) lamps and devices that help surgeons see blood vessels in tumors.

The prize-awarding academy said that their findings on quantum dots, which in size ratio have the same relationship to a football, as a football to the earth, had “added color to nanotechnology”—when matter is used on an atomic or molecular level in manufacturing.