Chemistry Labs

Photo credit: AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives — Wikimedia Commons · Copyrighted free use

Louis E. Brus

born 1943 · United States · Contemporary

Nobel Chemistry 2023

Columbia University physical chemist who made the first colloidal quantum dots at Bell Labs and explained their size-dependent electronic properties; shared the 2023 Nobel Prize.

Nobel Prize work

Shared with Alexey Ekimov and Moungi Bawendi for the discovery and synthesis of quantum dots: in 1983 at Bell Labs, Brus produced the first freely floating nanocrystals in solution and explained their size-dependent colours with quantum confinement and the Brus equation, laying the theory for nanocrystal optoelectronics.

Fields

Physical chemistryMaterials chemistry

Related topics

Metal nanoparticles, quantum dots

Nanoscale dimensions reshape optical response: metal particles support localized plasmons, while semiconductor quantum dots show size-dependent electronic transitions.

Synthesis and characterization of nanomaterials

Understand how nucleation, growth, surface chemistry, and measurement methods govern nanomaterial size, shape, composition, and function.

Semiconductors, perovskites

Connect band structure and charge-carrier populations to semiconductor behavior, then examine why halide perovskites are promising yet challenging optoelectronic materials.

Chemists in the same field

Mario J. Molina (1943)Richard E. Smalley (1943)Jacques Dubochet (1942)Dan Shechtman (1941)M. Stanley Whittingham (1941)Aleksey Yekimov (1945)