Moungi Bawendi, Louis Brus and Alexei Ekimov have been awarded Nobel Prize for Chemistry for “discovery and synthesis of quantum dots”.

Swedish media outlets on Wednesday published what they reported were the seemingly leaked names of this year’s Nobel chemistry prize recipients, hours before the laureates were to be announced.

Nobel leaks are rare, with the various prize-awarding academies going to great lengths to keep the winners’ names under wraps until the announcements.

Quantum dots are widely used in areas such as modern LED television screens, solar panels and in medicine where they among other things can help guide surgeons removing tumours.

The prize, which was raised this year to 11 million Swedish crowns (about $1 million), is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Chemistry is the third Nobel to be awarded this week after awards were announced for Physics and Medicine. Scientists Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier won the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics for “experimental methods that generate attosecond pulses of light for the study of electron dynamics in matter”

Hungarian scientist Katalin Kariko and US colleague Drew Weissman won the medicine prize for making mRNA molecule discoveries that paved the way for COVID-19 vaccines.