The news of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for quantum dots has galvanized the colloidal chemistry community worldwide. These recognitions were long awaited: quantum dots are perhaps some of the most vivid and spectacular examples of how matter is governed by the laws of quantum mechanics and represent the simplest and most practical demonstration of the particle in a box problem that science students are familiar with. They are arguably the most compelling example of a functional nanotechnology product entirely delivered by chemical synthesis that has found its way into applications. How has all of this started?
Back in the late 1970s to early 1980s, Alexei Ekimov, then working in the former Soviet Union, was studying copper chloride nanocrystals which he grew in glassy matrixes and found that the optical absorption properties of these nanocrystals were dependent on their size.
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