Imagine a particle so small that it’s the same relative size to a football as that ball is to the planet Earth. That’s the size of a quantum dot – a type of nanocrystal that changes colour depending on its size, and was once thought impossible to actually produce.
Today, they’re found in some high-definition television and computer screens, and are used in medicine to map what’s happening in cells and even tumours. And three scientists who helped discover and produce these quantum dots have now been awarded the 2023 Nobel prize in chemistry.
In this week’s episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, we speak to Louis Brus, one of these new Nobel laureates and an emeritus professor of chemistry at Columbia University in New York, about his work on quantum dots and what winning the accolade means to him.
