Milestone-Proposal talk:Quantum Dots

Advocates’ Checklist

1. Is the proposal for an achievement rather than for a person? If the citation includes a person's name, have the proposers provided the required justification for inclusion of the person's name?
2. Was the proposed achievement a significant advance rather than an incremental improvement to an existing technology?
3. Were there prior or contemporary achievements of a similar nature? If so, have they been properly considered in the background information and in the citation?
4. Has the achievement truly led to a functioning, useful, or marketable technology?
5. Is the proposal adequately supported by significant references (minimum of five) such as patents, contemporary newspaper articles, journal articles, or citations to pages in scholarly books? At least one of the references should be from a peer-reviewed scholarly book or journal article. The full text of the material, not just the references, shall be present. If the supporting texts are copyright-encumbered and cannot be posted on the ETHW for intellectual property reasons, the proposers shall email a copy to the History Center so that it can be forwarded to the Advocate. If the Advocate does not consider the supporting references sufficient, the Advocate may ask the proposer(s) for additional ones.
6. Are the scholarly references sufficiently recent?
7. Does the proposed citation explain why the achievement was successful and impactful?
8. Does the proposed citation include important technical aspects of the achievement?
9. Is the proposed citation readable and understandable by the general public?
10. Will the citation be read correctly in the future by only using past tense? Does the citation wording avoid statements that read accurately only at the time that the proposal is written?
11. Does the proposed plaque site fulfill the requirements?
12. Is the proposal quality comparable to that of IEEE publications?
13. Are any scientific and technical units correct (e.g., km, mm, hertz, etc.)? Are acronyms correct and properly upper-cased or lower-cased? Are the letters in any acronym explained in the title or the citation?
14. Are date formats correct as specified in Section 6 of Milestones Program Guidelines? Helpful Hints on Citations, plaque locations
15. Do the year(s) appearing in the citation fall within the range of the year(s) included at the end of the title?
16. Note that it is the Advocate's responsibility to confirm that the independent reviewers have no conflict of interest (e.g., that they do not work for a company or a team involved in the achievement being proposed, that they have not published with the proposer(s), and have not worked on a project related to the funding of the achievement). An example of a way to check for this would be to search reviewers' publications on IEEE Xplore.

Independent Expert Reviewers’ Checklist

1. Is suggested wording of the Plaque Citation accurate?
2. Is evidence presented in the proposal of sufficient substance and accuracy to support the Plaque Citation?
3. Does proposed milestone represent a significant technical achievement?
4. Were there similar or competing achievements? If so, have the proposers adequately described these and their relationship to the achievement being proposed?
5. Have proposers shown a clear benefit to humanity?

In answering the questions above, the History Committee asks that independent expert reviewers apply a similar level of rigor to that used to peer-review an article, or evaluate a research proposal. Some elaboration is desirable. Of course the Committee would welcome any additional observations that you may have regarding this proposal.

Submission and Approval Log (For staff use only)

Submitted date: 18 November 2024
Advocate approval date:
History Committee approval date:
Board of Directors approval date:

Initial Review -- Jbart64 (talk) 23:01, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

This milestone proposal needs additional work. Historical background tied to sources should be expanded. One sentence responses to questions intended to address historical claims need to be expanded. Supporting materials should be identified and linked. The context of the achievement and its challenges need further explanation. Finally, the discovery is 1982, publication is 1983, so the date is 1982.

I suggest the following approach to the milestone text that explains to the reader the nature of the achievement (70 words). It also limits the claim to the US discovery by Brus:

Colloidally Suspended Quantum Dots, 1982

Semiconductor nanocrystals (quantum dots/QDs) were independently discovered and synthesized in the United States and Soviet Union. QDs possess unique optical and electronic properties between bulk semiconductors and discrete atoms. In 1982, Louis Brus discovered and synthesized size-dependent quantum effects in particles floating freely in a solution. QDs are used in single-electron transistors, solar cells, LEDs, lasers, single-photon sources, second-harmonic generation, quantum computing, biology research, microscopy, medical imaging, and semiconductor fabrication.

Dave Bart Milestone Advocate

Re: Initial Review -- Jbart64 (talk) 18:34, 7 February 2025 (UTC)

I reviewed the updated proposal. A question: Does the title need the two words Colloidally Suspended, e.g. Colloidally Suspended Quantum Dots, 1982? Those two words appear frequently in the writeup and appear to indicate a specific type of QDs. Is this needed to distinguish this from the Soviet discovery?

Formatting: the writeup is good, but some of the section headings are appearing as first words of paragraphs which is confusing, Brian Berg or the History Center can help fix this. Dave Bart

Dave Bart

Support of Milestone Proposal -- Jbart64 (talk) 21:34, 16 February 2025 (UTC)

I have worked closely with the proposers, and they have addressed all my concerns. I fully support this milestone proposal, and in my opinion the requirements have been met, subject to the expert reviews. The responses of the experts will be posted as they come in. This milestone proposal will require a name inclusion review by the milestone subcommittee. David Bart Milestone Advocate

Expert Review #1 -- Jbart64 (talk) 23:58, 17 February 2025 (UTC)

Dr. Rolf Biernath is an inventor on 58 US patents. His 31 years of product development at 3M was primarily focused on electronic display technologies and optical films, and he became familiar with 3M's QDEF (Quantum Dot) film products during his work there. He spent 5 years at IBM developing semiconductor fab pilot processes. His PhD is in Chemical Engineering from UC Berkeley. Dr. Biernath excels in a broad range of science, technology, and engineering disciplines, and is skilled at explaining complex technology to non-experts. He currently consults with clients to improve and expand their business with AI and other advanced technologies.

I received Dr. Biernath's expert review on Sunday, February 17, 2025 04:56 PM:

Note, the last sentence of the Abstract section is truncated; this should be cleaned up. He supports the milestone:

1. Is the suggested wording of the Plaque Citation accurate? YES 2. Is evidence presented in the proposal of sufficient substance and accuracy to support the Plaque Citation? YES 3. Does the proposed milestone represent a significant technical achievement? YES 4. Were there similar or competing achievements? YES If so, have the proposers adequately described these and their relationship to the achievement being proposed? YES 5. Have proposers shown a clear benefit to humanity? YES, in that the application is finding increasing use cases in electronics and in diagnostics.

David Bart Milestone Advocate

Expert Comment #1 -- Jbart64 (talk) 22:25, 19 February 2025 (UTC)

Todd D. Krauss is Jay Last Professor in Arts, Sciences & Engineering at the University of Rochester. He is a Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Optics. He has a PhD in Applied Physics, Cornell University, 1998, and is the director of the Nano and Optical Materials Chemistry Cluster at the University of Rochester. Dr. Krauss' scientific research interests involve fundamental studies of materials at the nanometer scale, their potential use in renewable energy and biotechnology, and the applications for these nanometer scale materials in the general areas of novel biological sensors, efficient and inexpensive solar cells, and nano-optical devices.

I received the following expert comment on February 19, 2025 3:24 PM:

Thanks for your note to review the milestone achievement. In my mind this is really a "no-brainer" since the Nobel Prize was awarded to Louis Brus and colleagues last year. (One could make a strong argument that this Milestone honor should have preceded the Nobel Prize by a couple of decades). Unfortunately, I don't have time to provide you with a formal review for a least a couple of months due to ongoing commitments and deadlines.

David Bart Milestone Advocate