Daniel and Jorge Explain the UniverseDaniel and Jorge break down the quantum world into tiny dots that have amazing properties.
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Hey Daniel, I found another physics related scam recently.
Uh oh, did someone try to sell you quantum girl Scout cookies again?
Girl Scout cookies do seem to quantum tunnel into my stomach pretty easily. I don't even have to eat them.
So then what's the scam?
I saw an ad for a quantum television? Can you believe that? Nonsense? Actually, wait, what do you mean? This is a real thing? What does the quantum TV do? Is it always fuzzy because of the uncertainty principle?
Yeah, you know, the word quantum gets abused a lot, But this one time it's for real.
It's not a scam.
No, quantum televisions are a real thing, and they are extra crispy m.
Just like a Girl Scout cookie. I am hoor hammade cartoonist and the creator of PhD comics.
Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle of physicists, and I'm at least twenty five percent made out of Girl Scout cookies.
Oh wow, you're you're a big fan.
It's for a good cause, you know, That's why I eat them. It's for good cos.
Hey, you know you can buy them and not eat them.
What that would be offensive? You have to throw them into trash. You don't have to tell the Girl Scouts they would know.
But welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of iHeartRadio.
In which we take our cookie fueled brains and try to understand everything about the universe, not just the tiny quantum particles and the crazy stuff happening in the center of stars, but everything in between. We take that immense mental journey all the way out into the universe and back into the quantum particles and explain all of it to you.
Yeah, do you have a favorite Girl Scout cookies?
Then ooh, we're getting real here.
Huh.
I'm not going to endorse one particular Girl Scout cookies. I gotta go. I think with the classic thin mint you know, it's just it's so easy for them to tunnel into your stomach.
Hmmm.
My spouse would be appalled at the mixing of mint and chocolate.
Do this taste like toothpaste to her?
Yeah? With chocolate.
There's probably a reason this is no chocolate toothpaste flavor.
But there are a lot of interesting and amazing things in this universe that we like to talk about in this podcast. Things that are out there in the vast reaches of space, and also things that are right here at home, and things that are maybe at the tip of your fingertip without even knowing.
Yes, things that are harder to understand even than the combination of herbs and chocolate, things that are weird, things that are quantum, things that make no sense but are actually real.
Yeah, because physics reveals that the universe is a pretty weird place. It doesn't always work the same way that we grew up thinking that it works. There's all kinds of strange things going on, especially at the microscopic and at the quantum level.
Yeah, that's basically the job of physics is to figure out how does the world actually work, Not the way we thought it should work or the way we might have imagined it worked from our experience with rivers and rocks and stuff, but the way fundamentally things actually happen. And sometimes that's just for our edification, just to know how the universe actually works. But sometimes it's actually useful and we can use it to build cool new stuff.
Wait, what physics can be useful? Who told you that some physicists your parents.
Some physicists? After he sold me some cookies?
Oh right, right? Is there an age limit or professional limit to being a girl scout?
You've never had a physics scout cookie.
Hmmm? Does it taste like particles? I hear the Higgs boson is pretty tasty.
Everything tastes like particles. Man, everything is particles. Particles are also the only thing doing any tasting.
Yeah, you're saying that physics can be useful.
Physics can be useful. Yes. In fact, you know, the World Wide Web was invented at a particle physics laboratory, and all sorts of things come out of just like gaining knowledge about how the universe works.
Right, And we all know how useful the World Wide Web is.
That's right. It's contributed to a huge decrease in productivity worldwide.
It's like an anti useful particle.
There, depends on your goals, man.
Of reducing work. But yeah, well I do admit it's useful to know physics, for sure, and sometimes we can use that knowledge to build amazing and cool things that we couldn't do before. And that includes maybe quantum mechanics, which is like the weirdest and most awesomest thing in the universe.
It is, and our understanding of quantum mechanics underlies most modern electronics. It's the reason that your phone works, it's the reason your computer boots up. It's also the reason your computer crashes.
I guess no, that's the fault of the girls got cook crumples, a film a keyword.
It's like a physical virus infecting your computer.
Yeah, Quantum mechanics helps us not just kind of understand what's happening with our electronics and everything around us, but you can actually use some of these weird quantum effects to do interesting things like microscopes, right, Like electron microscopes, They work on quantum mechanical principles.
Yeah.
Basically, everything that works at the very small scale, that uses one or two or a small set of particles has to follow quantum rules. So anything that's been super miniaturized or uses particles to look at super tiny stuff has to follow quantum rules. And sometimes those quantum rules are different in a really useful way.
Yeah. And usually this kind of technology is limited to physics labs and engineering labs and research centers. But soon quantum mechanics technology might be coming to your home.
That's right. Get ready to buy quantum.
Cookies, I mean quantum TVs.
You know, there is actually something quantized about cookies. You notice how you can't eat one and a half cookies or three in a quarter's cookies. It's always like integer numbers of cookies.
Oh my god, you just discovered the whites and quantum cookie principle.
I did a lot of experiments.
It's more of a social science principle though.
Yeah, it's a bit of a soft science. The more cookies I get, the soft my science is.
And your stomach and your body exactly. Well, there is now a proposed quantum television technology and it's based on kind of a and not a new technology, but a technology that's been around for a while in quantum mechanics.
Yeah, this is really fascinating idea that lets us build something like artificial atoms and manipulate electron energy levels to get all sorts of fascinating properties that we could use for really a wide range of possible technologies.
So to the on the program, we'll be talking about what are quantum dots? That does sound like a.
Girl's cut a very very small cookie.
The quantum dot, you know, So what is it? Finman's and snickerdoodles and quantum dots.
But how many quantum dots would be in one box of cookies? Right? Like ten to the twenty six. That's a pretty good deal, mom, I only had ten of the twelve quantum dot cookies for dessert.
M that's your allotment for the rest of your life.
So when you heard the phrase quantum dot, did you think it was another one of these ridiculous schemes.
Yeah, I'd heard of him before. I just never knew what they are. I mean, I imagine they're just really small dots at the quantum level. But you know it is it like a dot of ink, a dot of what?
It's a dot of quantum?
Right?
Mm?
Pure quantum ess all right? Well, as usually o, Daniel went out there into the wilds of the Internet to ask people if they knew what quantum dots are.
So thank you to everyone who broke through their inhibitions and answered these random questions without any research. If you'd like to participate in the future, please write to me at questions at Daniel and Jorge dot com.
Yeah.
So think about it for a second. If someone asked you what a quantum dot is, what would you answer. Here's what people had to say.
I think a quantum dot refers to a single particle, such as an electron, that is isolated by means of electromagnetic fields. The particle is confined to a small region in space, so it has a very high kinetic energy.
Okay, I think quantum dots are really small collections of atoms. Belief often it's for gold atoms to lump together.
Maybe if the idea that like the universe is pixelated, maybe quantum dots are there the grid points that underlie everything.
If I had to guess, I would say quantum dots are maybe something like string theory, where if we break things down as small as we can get, we're stuck with these quantum dots and they can be the building blocks for a lot of quantum things. I think Corey said at once the word quantum just goes in front of anything these days. It seems like.
I don't know for sure, but I think it might refer to the mathematical concept of a particle that doesn't have a volume, so it only has coordinates but no volume in space or zero volume.
Quantum it's something small and a dot. It's something small also, so quantum dot. Probably you'll find it in at the end of a quantum sentence.
M how about that?
So I've never actually heard the phrase quantum dots before. My guess is that it has to do with the idea that space itself is quantized, and that if you were able to zoom in far enough, there would be a smallest possible point. I've never ever heard of a quantum dot.
I'm afraid.
I'm guessing they have something to do with the idea that space is quantized, so like pixels on a display. All right, not a lot of people know what a quantum dot is, apparently no.
But there are some really nice speculations here, like the math concept of a particle with no volume. That's definitely something we've talked about in the podcast.
Hmmmm.
I guess everything is a quantum dot technically, right, like all particles are just the point particles? Wasn't difference between a dot and a point? Daniel?
Oh?
Maybe get philosophical.
One of them has mint in it, I guess, and the other one doesn't. I have no idea.
I have no idea when it's round. Maybe the other one is pointy? Maybe?
Yeah, I don't know. A point, technically speaking, is a single value in space, whereas I guess a dot could have some with to it.
Mm, you have a good point with dot, all right, let's jump into it, Daniel, what is a quantum dot? Settle this for us?
Yeah, quantum dot is really fascinating it's basically just a piece of seven conductor, but a very very very small piece, so you get interesting quantum effects. And because semiconductors are sort of very flexible electrically and can be manipulated by doping and adding different kinds of materials, you can essentially construct any kind of energy levels you want for your electron, which is really what determines the sort of like bulk properties of a material. M.
So it's just a really really tiny piece of anything, right, doesn't have you a semiconductor. It can be any material. You can call it a quantum dot.
Yeah, it could be any material, but we typically use semiconductors because of their interesting electrical properties. And so take some piece of material and make a really really small version of it, and then quantum effects take over things like the electron, for example, gets trapped in your quantum dot, and then the width of it is now important to how that electron behaves. It changes like the energy levels the electron can have, which changes like how it absorbs light or emits lighter, conducts electricity. M.
How big are we talking about or how small are we talking about? These quantum dots being like how many nanometers.
We're talking about like one to ten nanometers in size. These are really tiny, Like you could line up a million of these things across your finger. They're super duper small, and they have to be small in order to get to the quantum effects, right, they have to be basically on the quantum scale, the ant Man scale, So one.
To ten nanometers. And how does that compare it to like the you know, the quote unquote with of an atom.
It's about ten or fifteen times wider than like the hydrogen atom is defined by like you know, the cloudo electrons around the nucleus. So you're definitely getting down to that scale. And I think that's sort of the key idea is that you know, when you get electrons down to this really small scale like the size of a hydrogen atom or what happens in atoms, they start to exhibit these quantum properties, like having very specific energy levels that only happens when you can strain an electron.
Mmmmm all right, so you know it's like maybe ten atoms wide these dots, And are they actually like dots? Are they like cubes? Are they like little balls? Do we have pictures of them?
We do have pictures of them, usually they're little crystals, and it depends a little bit on how they are built and how they're fabricated. And we'll get into it in a minute about how you make these things. You can make them in almost any shape. You can make cubes, you can make pyramids, you can make you know, diamond shapes, whatever you like. And the shape of the nanocrystals changes how the electron is sort of captured in it and can change its behavior. So depending on what you want for its electrical properties, you might design a different shape.
Mmmm. All right, so it's almost like you're kind of making an atom. Almost.
Yeah. The key idea here is that when you look at the periodic table, you see lots of different elements, and those elements all have really different properties, right, Some of them conduct a lot of electricity, some of them are really interactive, and some of them are not. And all of those properties come from the behavior of the electrons and their energy, Like are those electron orbitals filled? And how big are they? Et cetera, et cetera. But we're sort of limited to the atoms that we have in nature. You know, if you want an atom that does a specific kind of thing that emits lighter to a certain frequency or absorbs light of a certain frequency. You sort of have to pick from the menu that we have until now. Because quantum dots allow you to basically engineer electron energy levels to say, I'd like electron energy levels that look like this, so have whatever whatever property. That's why they're sometimes called artificial atoms. They don't have a nucleus and electrons around them, but to have that sort of property of an atom that they're controlled by their electron energy levels.
Interesting, they're like designer atoms, yes, exactly, designer atoms like made to order. Uh.
Yeah, And so if we want a material that does something that no natural material does, then we can maybe build it out of quantum dots or design quantum dots that have that specific ability.
What kinds of abilities are we talking about, like reflecting light or like how they conduct or how easy they give up an electron or how they taste.
I would not recommend eating any of these quantum dots. Almost all of them are totally toxic. But yeah, they have interesting optical properties, like they can absorb light at whatever frequency you want, you know, and they can give off light at whatever frequencies you want, which is very helpful for example, and making a very crisp display for your television, and other kinds of things like absorbing power for solar cells. And there's another aspect to it, which is maybe less practical but more fascinating, which is that you can sort of design quantum behaviors. Previously, when people wanted to do quantum experiments, it was hard because you had to use like actual atoms that we find in nature, and those atoms can be difficult to deal with. You have to like have a vacuum system and lasers to capture it. Remember we talked about Bose Einstein contentsate. It's a difficult thing to do because it has to be done with atoms and all these complex systems.
Yeah, I lose my atoms all the time. They're slippery.
They are slippery, and it's a pain and it's expensive. But if you could do it with quantum dots, they're much easier to manufacture. You might even be able to print them on chips for example, So you could do all sorts of fascinating quantum experiments without all the expensive machinery.
Could you print like a quantum computer out of quantum dots.
Yes, exactly, that's one direction. People are going trying to build cube bits out of quantum dots.
But doesn't the quantumness of something always decrease the more atoms you get, Like if you have ten atoms, that's usually sort of like less quantumy than one atom.
Right, you can worry about like decoherence effects. As it interacts with its environment, it loses some of those quantum effects because the wave functions decohere, and that's something that's really difficult to do with atoms because it's hard to isolate them from the system. Right, The key is isolation. You could have a really large system that doesn't decohere as long as it remains isolated from the environment. That's hard to do with atoms because you know, they bounce around and they jiggle and stuff. But quantum dots are sort of easier to localize and therefore easier to isolate.
Is the idea, Oh, man, are we going to go back to dot matrix printers, but this time there'll be quantum dot matrix printers.
Yeah, exactly.
What we're is that our feature again, and then we'll go back to quantum motives too, but.
It'll be the quantum version of those sounds. So it'll be much spookier.
Mmmm, sound cooler, which is by definition.
And something that's really fascinating about these things is that they're often referred to as zero dimensional objects.
Mmmm.
Of course, because that's not confusing.
And that was really confusing from me when I first was reading about that, because you know, I'm three dimensional. There's forward, backwards, side to side, and up and down. I'm defined by three different dimensions, and you can imagine, you know, a sheet of paper is almost two dimensional, and like a thin piece of string is like almost one dimensional. What's a zero dimensional object? And it's really something where it can't go anywhere, So it's really like a point in space. Yes, there are electrons in there, and yes, technically they can move a little bit sideways, but really they're constrained and the only way they can move is sort of up and down in energy.
Oh interesting, almost like a perfect box for electrons.
Yeah, it's a perfect little box for electrons. And you know, quantum mechanically, the way the electron behaves is completely defined by the shape of the box. Like an electron just floating through space is not actually quantized like you could have any energy level. Free electrons are not quantized at all. The quantization only happens when you constrain it. When you say you got to live in this little box or whiz around this nucleus of the atom, that's where the quantization comes from. And so here, by constructing your own box, you define your own energy levels for the electron, which I think is pretty cool. So we're like quantum designers.
Wow, And this is an idea from the eighties. It was made a long time ago, but only now maybe we're getting into how do I actually use these thoughts?
Yeah, exactly. The idea has been around for a few decades, and the proof of principle was done in the eighties. But with lots of things, it's only really useful if you can make a lot of them, and if you can make them at less than like a billion dollars per dot.
Hmmm, right, all right, Well let's get into how you actually make a quantum dot and what can you do with them. But first let's take a quick break.
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All right, we're talking about quantum dots, which are not girls scoutcookies, but possibly TVs in the future.
Yes, TVs, maybe even in your present.
They might end up on our phones.
Yeah, you could have a quantum dot screen. They could create screens that are like really flexible you can roll up and stuff in your pocket.
Oh, just don't eat them.
Do not eat quantum screens.
All right. Quantum dot is a little tiny piece of semiconductor, maybe one to ten nanometers wide, which is about like ten atoms in uh with and they kind of act like little designer atoms. They can trap electrons and you can make them sit and whatever energy levels you want.
Yeah, you can make the particles dance whatever dance you tell them to.
All right, So I guess the question is how do you make them? How do you make a quantum dot? Do you just like spray some quantumness and they form in the air. What's the formative.
Yeah, it's one tspoon of quantumness, two teaspoons of dot and then just mix they go. It's hard, right, and this is one of the challenges. And so there are a lot of different approaches to making these quantum dots, and we'll see which one sort of takes off for various application. There's basically three totally different approaches. One is chemical, so basically just try to mix these things, like we were just joking about, but for real. And the idea is that these things are crystals, which means that in some sense they should self assemble, you know, the way like crystals will form themselves. If you put salt into solution and you shake it, the salt should come out of the solution, you know, make these crystals. And so you do the same thing with the kind of quantum dots you want to make. Whatever it is you're trying to build, maybe it's mostly silicon, maybe it has other stuff in it. You put all those ingredients into some solution, you heat it up so it all like breaks up into a big soup, and then you hope that nanocrystals get nucleated and then sort of build on themselves mm.
But then there would be floating around or they would kind of form on your surface.
No, then they would be floating around exactly, and then you'd need to do something to like pull them out and you know, make them useful somehow. But often you want them in solution, like maybe you want them suspended in water so they can glow a certain temperature where you can inject them into your experiment or whatever.
Sounds kind of tricky.
It's pretty tricky, and also it's tricky to filter them right. You want only quantum dots that have formed well, and so this process isn't always going to form you high quality quantum dots every single time, and so it's tricky to get exactly the right ones out. And so people have tried all sorts of variations on this approach, like using molecular seeding, you know, starting with something that has sort of like the right shape to nucleate those crystals and encourage things to form just the right way. It's really complex, sort of like as a chemistry problem. You know, how do you get all these molecules bouncing around in solution to come together and like build themselves out of these mini legos, right.
Yeah, sounds tricky. What are other ways that you can make them?
Another way is basically following the principles of semiconductor technologies, which have come really really far in printing tiny circuits. The way your computer is built is not by super tiny little fingers soldering together little components individually, right, It's printed onto a sheet of silicon in a super duper tiny way. So they have developed this technology because it underpins the entire consumer electronics and computing industry to print really really thin layers of semiconductors really near each other. So they're trying to use and adapt that technology to also make quantum dots.
Right. Because that technology is they say, almost running into the physical limits of what you can print, right, Like they're starting to print circuits that are you know, about the size where the quantum effects are important or where you know, you would literally like stacking ten atoms together.
Yeah, they are really approaching the limit of this technology, which is really awesome and it shows you like what humans can do, how innovative they can be when like really press to the limit, and also when there are like billions of dollars at stake, because the smaller components, the fasterier computer, and so like Intel and AMD and all these folks are really really pushing hard on these technologies because there's literally rivers of money behind it.
Yeah, there's billions of people who want to phone in their hands, in their pockets, and so the smaller you can get these chips to, the more powerful they are.
Yeah, and there's a lot of examples of when the consumer industry pushes on something really really hard and then it turns out to be useful for other things like physics research. For example, that same technology that you use to print circuits, we also used to print particle detectors at the large hadron collider. Those really thin layers of silicon can help you tell, oh, did an electron pass here, or did a muon pass there? Or was this weird kind of cork that passed through. So we can print very high resolution detectors for our particles. And we can never could have developed that technology ourselves. It's only because billions were spent by the semiconductor industry to develop that technology. So now people are doing the same thing for making quantum dots. They're pigging backing on all those advances.
Like you can print little quantum dots on a silicon chip.
Yeah, exactly. So this is the direction they're going in for making cubits out ofquantum dots, little devices that basically could be the elements of quantum computers. Currently, the best quantum computers have only like twenty five maybe forty cubits, and they're done using atoms. But as we talked about previously, having atoms in a trap, for example, is very Unstable's very hard to get that and keep it isolated and keep it from decohering, which is what you need to do to do the quantum computing. And so the idea is that this could be more stable. It's still in its early days and we don't have a quantum computer made out of cubits from quantum dots in silicon that competes at all with the ones made from ions, but you know, it's a promising avenue.
So have they been able to do it. Have they been able to print quantum dots using silicon lithography?
Yeah, they can print quantum dots.
Oh wow, So it's like around the corner then.
Yeah, exactly, it's around the corner, and you know, there's a bit of a definitional thing here. Basically, any very small piece of silicon is a quantum dot. And so in some respects, anytime you get your silicon that's small, it's a quantum dot. The question is, can you design it to be the quantum dots you want?
Right?
Right? I guess technically any dot is quantum. All dots are quantum.
Even your girl Scout cookie crumbs are quantum crumbs if they're small enough.
Yeah, they're there and not there at the same time, all right, So you can maybe mix them in solution or print them on a silicon chip. You can also do something even kind of more interesting.
Yeah, I think the funnest and craziest idea is to use viruses to assemble these things.
What like yeah, like not the figurative viruses, but real viruses.
Real actual physical viruses. So these are things that like attack bacteria and get the bacteria to make more of themselves. But they can do more than just reproduce. They actually have like proteins on their surface that are little molecular machines that can do stuff. And the idea is that you find a virus that grabs onto your material, you can use it as like a little laborer, like a little worker to build yourself a crystal out of that material.
Wait, so like viruses can grab and manipulate individual atoms.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean viruses are super small, and they have little proteins on them, right, And what is a protein but basically a molecular little machine. And those proteins have surfaces on them that bind to some things and not to other things. Like proteins for example, cut and repair DNA, and DNA is just a string of molecules, and so we're talking about things at the same scale. And so the idea is that these viruses, you find ones that like to grab onto the molecule you want, and you figure out a way to get the viruses to assemble in something like a regular pattern. That's the sort of mind boggling part is that the viruses aren't just all like all swimming around, each holding their piece of the quantum dot. They arrange themselves in something like a crystal pattern. So then the pieces of the quantum dot they're each holding click together to form the quantum dot.
What that's crazy? Have they actually done this? Is this like ongoing research?
Yeah, this is ongoing research. They have actually done it. They haven't scaled it up, but it's something that really might work. You know, anytime you can like tap into the power of biology. We could never engineer something ourselves that way. But the way they take advantage of it is through evolution. They do this thing called phage display where they put a bunch of the material they want the viruses to capture on a surface, and then they just wash viruses over it, and the ones that grab on to the surface are the ones they keep. And then they breed those viruses together to make new viruses, and they do it again and again and again, and so they're like artificially selecting viruses that are good at this one thing. So basically breeding little viruses that can do our jobs for us.
Wow. I mean, we all know how good we are at handling viruses. I know it does seem as a civilization. What could go wrong? Daniel?
What could go wrong? Exactly? Maybe they could bake our cookies for us.
That's pretty interesting that you can maybe like kind of use viruses as little assembly robots.
M M, yeah, little nano robots. I mean, rather than going to our engineers and saying, hey, could you build me a super tinier robot that's nanometers wide and can do this job. Just find one out there in nature and adapt it to your purpose.
Right. Well, it sounds like you can build quantum dots, I guess is the hard part is getting them to do the things you want them to do, or to like, you know, design them and make them to spec to take advantage of these interesting quantum properties.
Yeah. If you want the quantum properties to do exactly what you want, you have to design them just right. You need exactly the right kind of you know, gallium in their academium in there to get just the kind of electron energy levels you need to accomplish what you're trying to accomplish.
All right, Well, let's get into what quantum dots can do. What can they do for you, Daniel, besides you know, entertain and amaze, Yeah, or give your taste to your cookies.
And maybe raise a virus army to take over the world to make more cookies. Oh yeah, that's what I meant. That's what I meant.
Or take over the world with cookies. You know, there's always a way, But for us, let's take a quick break.
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Tackle these situations in stride and he of course be annoyed when planned expense comes up, but not let it be something that slows me down right. And also, as I did with repairing my credit, you know, hiring somebody to do credit repair for me. You know, that was a gift that I gave myself that allowed me to then you know, get my first apartment, get you know, my first car under my name, then eventually buy my own home. Like these are all things that.
Are possible for all of us.
We just have to educate ourselves and put in some of the hard work that it takes to unlearn bad practices we might have, you know, inherited from our famis, and then also educate ourselves on the things that we don't know, you know, the information that wasn't passed down to us because our parents weren't educating on these things.
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All right, quantum dots are going to take over the world, Daniel. They're going to improve our screen technology apparently, and maybe a lot more because basically you can make quantum computers, or you can kind of make designer atoms so that you can make things maybe that have special properties. Yeah, so what are some of the things that quantum dots can do?
Well?
The most important thing is that quantum dots can have sort of designer optical properties. Remember that the reason that some things look a certain color is because they reflect light of that color, which means they're absorbing all the other colors. So if you can design the material that absorbs light at certain frequencies and not other frequents, you can basically design its color to be whatever you like. And if you want to design a very crisp display, or you want a marker you can inject into your experimental subject and watch as something flows around. Then you want to be able to design its optical properties. And so as you change the size of your quantum dot, for example, you change the energy that that electron can absorb, which changes how it looks optically.
Mmmm.
It kind of sounds like you're just making colors though, Like, isn't that how color works? Usually, like the atom in like a blue paint reflect blue light especially.
Yeah, that's exactly what we're trying to do. We're just making colors, but we're making very crisp, well defined colors, right. You want something which absorbs very very narrowly or only reflects a very very narrow range of frequencies. So it's like exactly blue or super duper perfect red, or exactly the green you were looking for.
M I see quantum paint, is it?
Yeah? Exactly. And so this makes it if you're going to build a television, for example, it makes it much easier to get crisp colors. You know exactly how to combine your various little layers to get exactly the color you want on screen. So it's simpler, it's cheaper, it's more efficient. You don't need, like, you know, complicated filters to get rid of the edge effects you didn't really want because you were forced to use the atoms the physics gave you. You can invent your own atoms to devise your own quantum screen.
But can you make these quantum dots change the light or turn them on and off? How would this work? How would this television work? What would it be? Just a one image television?
I think each one is essentially like a filter. So you put some source of light behind a layer of red quantum dots, and which you get are red light, or if you put light behind a layer green quandom dots, you get green light or blue light. So it operates on the same basic principle as all your other televisions, which have for example, blue LEDs or green LEDs or red LEDs. But this is the way that you get the pure light instead of all the white light.
Mmmm.
Be like super precise colors, that's the idea.
Super precise colors. Yeah, extra precise, extra precise. And also because they're more efficient, they show exactly the color you want. There's lower energy consumption and so you can have like longer lifetimes.
Mmm. Cool. And that's the tricky part, I guess, is how you make them at the size of a television, Because you have to make a lot of them.
You got to make a lot of them, yeah, exactly.
And they have to survive my kids dropping my phone for example.
They do. But you know, because they can be sort of printed on anything in their microscopic they can potentially be used for things like you know, rollable or flexible displays in the future.
Mmm cool, all right, or like a like a blanket TV.
Yeah, or TV you could like fold up and you know, stick in your pocket or something.
Mmm cool, all right. What else can we use quantum dots for?
Another awesome application is in solar cells, because again you can really tune the absorption and the emission. Then you can get quantum dots that absorb light at exactly the peak wavelength that you're seeing on your roof, you know, so you can make sure that like the peak efficiency for absorption is where most of the light actually is.
Right because right now it's kind of fuzzy, right.
Yeah, exactly, it's kind of fuzzy. And these solar cells are expensive to produce. But if you could get quantum dots ramped up so you could make a lot of them, you can make basically like solar power paint, and you could like have a solution with quantum dots in it that you basically paint onto a surface and it becomes a solar power cell.
What Like, you can just paint your roof and then attach some wires to it and it's a solar panel.
Yes exactly, that is wild. Yeah, they would absorb the energy and they would like chain themselves up so they can pass a current along and so that would be pretty awesome. Like, you know how cool it is that you can paint like a chalkboard on a wall and it actually kind of works. That's pretty cool. Well, this is like a step beyond that. It's like painting an electrical device onto your roof.
Wow, or anything really, your car or your hat or really you can get a tattoo. Can you get a solar cell tattoo, you know, inked on your skin?
That would be awesome.
Awesome, and you can charge your phone just by it against your body.
Yeah, and the tattoo should look like a solar cell, right, that would be super cool. It looks like a solar cell and acts like a solar cell.
Well, the technically you could make it look like anything, Yeah, you could. You can make it look like a rose or your grandma and it would be helping you save some energy.
That'd be cool. It power your phone?
Yeah, cool, all right, so you can make solar paint. What else can you do with it?
You can also use it in science. A lot of biology uses something called bio labeling, where you like inject some substance into a bacterium or into a larger animal, and you want to follow, like where did it go, Where is it being used? Where is the active site where it's like being actually processed. So these quantum dots are like more stable and brighter than the other dies, and so they're much more useful. They can like last for months.
But they're also toxic, aren't they.
Yes, they're poisonous.
I guess if you don't want your sample to live very long.
Yeah, a lot of them. Because you want to engineer particular optical properties require you to use various substances like cadmium, which is pretty toxic. So we're not at a point where you want, you know, your kids eating a spoonful of quantum dots and definitely not. But you know, if you don't mind killing your bacteria to learn about how it's doing something or how it's defending itself, then it's all right.
Does that put a cabash on the tattoos as well? Like I tattoo cadmium into your body, that would give you other kinds of cancer.
Yes, not recommended yet, but people are working on ways to make quantum dots that don't require cadmium or other toxic materials. So I'm pretty sure that in the future will have humans save quantum dots.
M all right, cool, what else can we make with quantum dots?
Well, we can also build super tiny electronics. You know about this material called graphene, which is basically like a lattice of carbon built in a super fancy interesting way that has fancy molecular properties. Well, graphene is really stable and really conductive even when it's cut into super tiny devices like one nanomet or wide. And so you can build like the tiniest of electronics using graphene single crystals, which are technically also quantum dots.
Hmmm. That you can make a circuit that's literally like one atom talks to another atom, and then that atom talks to another atom.
Yeah, exactly, And so this is like one potential way to even further miniaturize our electronics.
Wouldn't it get quantum at that point, or like, would it still behave like a regular circuit.
It would get quantum exactly, but so you'd have to define it to do exactly what you want. But you can build transistors out of single atoms, and single electron transistors are a thing you can do. The chemistry and the physics is a little bit different from the way we're currently doing electronics. But you can build the basic components we need for circuits out of these raffine single crystals.
All right, Well, but it sounds like maybe the technology that's pushing it at least into the mainstream is this idea of a quantum TV. So how far away are we from that? Are they actually starting to make them or think about them, or it's Netflix investing on this.
Yeah, quantum TVs are negative five years away, which means they've been on the market since about twenty fifteen.
Why what do you mean, like you can put in money to buy a quantum TV ten years in the future.
No, that means five years ago, if you went on Amazon and typed in quantum led there were TVs for sale that you could purchase. You could go purchase a quantum LEDTV right now.
Oh, but it's not really made out of quantum dots, is it.
No, it really has quantum dot technology. Oh oh, this is really a thing. Really wow. Okay, it's not a future technology. It's like five years ago technology. It's like Obama years technology. Exactly. Obama probably has a quantum TV and he's probably sitting in front of it eating quantum cookies right now.
Because yes, we can watch a quantum TV. Really, So if I buy a quantum TV, it has like quantum dots in.
It, yeah, exactly, it has a quantum dot layer which filters this like LED backlight and helps reduce better color. So, like we were saying at the top of the program, quantum TVs are not a scam. They are real and they actually use quantum technology. Unlike quantum yogurt and quantum hamsters and quantum massage and quantum stealth technology. This is real applications of quantum mechanics on your wall right right.
Although you know, technically yogurt does have quantum particles in it.
Everything tastes like particles in the end.
It's good for your guts, all right. So have you seen a quantum TV. Does it look crisper and does it look nicer. I think you should do some research, Anuel. Maybe buy yourself a TV with your grant money.
Yeah, maybe I will. You know, I did look up quantum TVs, but I can only watch a video of a quantum TV on my non quantum screen and so it doesn't to come through. It's like looking at a video of a high definition television on your low definition television. It's not very impressive. So I've never actually seen one.
And also the only clip you can watch is a clip of Scott baculating quantum leap, which doesn't help you.
Yeah, they need to work on the quantum content really, but no, I've never actually seen one in the wild. So any listeners out there that have a quantum screen, right to us and let us know how awesome is it.
Yeah, take a picture and send it to us to see how good it looks.
Take a quantum picture.
Yeah, we'll get it and not get it at the same time. All right, Well, that's pretty cool that this technology is out there. It is being used on televisions. People are technically potentially watching Netflix right now with a quantum TV. Mm hmm hope. So wow, all right, and it might potentially give some pretty amazing technologies in the future.
That's right. With the power to understand the quantum world comes the ability to engineer it and to have it do all sorts of things that normal atoms cannot do. So it's not just the physics playing with the universe because we want to understand, but sometimes there are actual benefits for humanity.
Yeah, yeah, stay tuned for those quantum tattoos. Well, every physicist get one. Just do like, you know, show solidarity and team spirit.
I don't think you could ever say every physicist will do anything except apply for grants.
All right, Well, we hope you enjoyed that, and we hope you look at the world a little bit different. Sometimes quantum technology and quantum effects are there for us to see and for us to binge watch with. Well, thanks for joining us, See you next time.
Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. When you pop a piece of cheese into your mouth, you're probably not thinking about the environmental impact. But the people in the dairy industry are That's why they're working hard every day to find new ways to reduce waste, conserve natural resources, and drive down greenhouse gas emissions. House US dairy tackling greenhouse gases. Many farms use anaerobic digestors to turn the methane from manure into renewable energy that can power farms, towns, and electric cars. Visit you as dairy dot COM's Last Sustainability to learn more.
There are children, friends, and families walking riding on paths and roads every day. Remember they're real people with loved ones who need them to get home safely. Protect our cyclists and pedestrians because they're people too. Go safely California from the California Office of Traffic Safety and Caltrans.
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