Illustration of the French-US chemist Moungi Bawendi (born 1961). Bawendi is best known for the discovery of quantum dots, which are nanoparticles of semiconductor material that emit photons when excited. The size of the quantum dot changes the wavelength of photon emitted, and therefore the colour. Bawendi was awarded a share of the 2023 Noble Prize in Chemistry along with his colleague Louis Brus and Alexei Ekimov (who discovered quantum dots independently of Bawendi and Brus) for this discovery.