Nobel for chemistry to nano-crystal-makers

This year’s trend in the Nobel prizes in the sciences has been to hand over the laurel to those scientist who worked with the small building blocks. In the Nobel for Medicine it was the mRNA, in Physics it was the electron, and in chemistry it turns out to be the nano-crystals that are used to light up the television screens, the LED bulbs and also used as part of diagnostic kits.

Three scientists independent of each other have successively discovered how the different sizes of crystals give out light in different colours, and how a chemical solution can be used to create and stabilise these nano-crystals which have had such a tremendous success in our everyday lives for the last few decades.

These are called quantum dots because they display quantum effects in their properties, which vary according to size, and they change in a wave-like manner. Johan Aqvist, Chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry said while announcing the prize, “Quantum dots have many fascinating and unusual properties. Importantly, they have different colours depending on their size.”

The initial work was done by Russia-born and trained Alexei I Ekimov, who later moved to the United States to be the Chief Scientist at the Nanoparticles Technology in New York.

He showed that the coloured glass he was working on was the effect of nanoparticles in the copper chloride. This was in the 1980s. A little later, US-born Louis E Brus showed the quantum effects of nanoparticles floating in a fluid. In 1993, Paris-born Moungi Bawendi, who had a doctorate from Chicago University, showed how these quantum dots can be produced chemically which resulted in perfect particles, which were stable. This led to its wide commercial use.

It is interesting that in all the three Nobel prizes for the sciences, the discoveries have practical use while they are the outcome of basic research.

The basic research implies that you are looking at fundamental particles and what they are, and you discover that they can be put to work that will help mankind. The usefulness of the discovered stuff is indeed accidental in some ways. But once it reveals its usefulness, the small building blocks like the mRNA, electron and quantum dots seem to be made for the job!

There seems to be this clear division between science and technology. Science appears to be the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, without a thought whether it will have any use or not. And even if there is no use, the joy of discovery is a reward in itself. But it has turned out that most scientific discoveries like Isaac Newton’s law of gravity or Niels Bohr’s discovery of the sub-atomic structure and Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity would lead to tremendous technological progress like planes and rockets from an understanding of gravity, the nuclear embedded Inside and atom from the structure of the atom, and structure of the universe from Einstein’s theory of relativity.

Every year, the Nobel Prizes draw public attention to the many wonderful things that have been discovered many years, sometimes decades ago and which have been put to great use in creating the modern life we are enjoying. And there is the hope that it is science and technology, which are sometimes blamed for creating the industrial civilization that has led to the climate crisis, that could lead to answers and solutions to the great challenge of climate and environmental crisis facing humanity. And that a Nobel prize in the sciences in the next few years would go for research in identifying the precise nature of the climate crisis, which is necessary to find the appropriate solution.