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A Whole New Matter: Science of Quasicrystals Today

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A whole new matter

Technion Distinguished Prof. Mordechai Segev
Quasiperiodic materials have unique electrical, optical, and mechanical properties. While bulk quasicrystals tend to be brittle, surface coatings benefit from the hardness of quasicrystals. Alloys containing quasicrystalline nanoparticles are stronger and lighter than other materials. Applications have included cookware, maraging stainless steel, surgical tools, missile skins and a storage medium for hydrogen.

The Technion quasicrystal legacy continues with research into photonic quasicrystals spearheaded by Distinguished Prof. Mordechai (Moti) Segev. Segev’s team was the first
to demonstrate nonlinear photonic quasicrystals: dielectric materials whose refractive index varies in a quasiperiodic fashion, and in addition change their properties when the light intensity is increased. 

In 2011, Segev’s team reported a direct experimental observation that transport in photonic
quasicrystals is enhanced by virtue of disorder.

The Quasicrystal Caucus

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“The mostimportantthing about thequasicrystals istheir meaningfor fundamentalscience. They haverewritten thefirst chapter inthe textbooks ofordered matter.”

Prof. Sven Lidin, Professor of InorganicChemistry, Lund University. Member of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry

File:Penrose tiling.gif
In the mid-1970s, mathematician Prof. Roger Penrose, of Oxford University, created an aperiodic mosaic, with a pattern that never repeats itself, with just two different rhomboid tiles
(a fat rhombus and a thin rhombus).
The page in Dan Shechtman’s lab logbook recording his April 8th, 1982, discovery.
Meeting at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in 1985 just months after shaking the foundations of materials science with publication of his discovery of quasicrystals, Dan Shechtman, winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, discusses the material’s surprising atomic structure with collaborators. From left to right are Shechtman; Frank Biancaniello, NIST; Denis Gratias, National Science Research Center, France; John Cahn, NIST; Leonid Bendersky, Johns Hopkins University (now at NIST); and Robert Schaefer, NIST.



200 years and nobody noticed?

 
How could quasicrystalshave evaded the communityof crystallographers for solong? In addition to the vitalinput of his collaborators,says Shechtman, thediscovery required severalcritical components. First,it was necessary to makeesoteric, rather than useful,rapidly cooled alloys.Then a researcher wouldhave to study them witha transmission electronmicroscope, performnumerous detailed analyses,and finally face a fortress ofresistance to changing therules of understanding thematerial world.

A quasiperiodic crystal is a structure that is ordered but not periodic. In quasicrystals, the symmetry is broken: there are regular patterns in the structure but the structure never repeats itself. A shifted copy will never match exactly.

Back in the ’80s when the new class of matter was accepted only by a few, it was dubbed
“Shechtmanite,” after the man who led the field through conception and infancy. The name “Shechtmanite” carried the risk of humiliation if the material turned out to be “twinning” (the intergrowth of two separate crystals on a shared lattice), as claimed by Shechtman’s opponents.
Quasicrystal structure can be understood through the mathematical theory of tiling.
Initially, however, Shechtman’s discovery was viewed with skepticism. “The scandal of
polywater was still in the air, and I feared for my scientific and academic career,” says Shechtman.
(l-r) John Werner Cahn, Dan Shechtman, Ilan Blech and Denis Gratias together on the
occasion of an international congress on quasicrystals in France, 1995.
© CNRS Photothèque – Pierre Grumberg
Shechtman returned to Technion, where Dr. Ilan Blech was the only colleague who not only believed in him but who agreed to cooperate with him. Blech was able to decipher Shechtman’s experimental findings and offered an explanation, known as the Icosahedral Glass Model.

Together, the researchers wrote an article that contained the model and the experimental results, and submitted it to the Journal of AppliedPhysics in the summer of 1984. The paper was rejected, resubmitted to the journal Metallurgical Transactions, and was published in 1985.
In November 1984, Physical ReviewLetters published Shechtman’s discovery in a scientific paper coauthored with three other scientists: Ilan Blech (Israel), Denis Gratias (France) and John Cahn (USA). Wider acclaim followed, mainly from physicists and mathematicians and later from crystallographers.
 
Pioneering contributors to the field of quasicrystals are Prof. Dov Levine of the Technion Faculty of Physics and Prof. Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University. They made the
connection between a theoretical tenfold symmetry model proposed by Prof. Alan Mackay and Shechtman’s diffraction pattern, and developed the mathematical model for the structure of non-periodic icosahedral phases found in metallic alloys. Steinhardt and Levine published an article in 1984 where they described quasicrystals and their aperiodic mosaics. 
Quasicrystals first got their name in this article!
 
Dov Levine (left) with Paul Steinhardt (right) 
at the Technion Faculty of Physics in 2006.
 
In August 1986, David R. Nelson wrote in Scientific American, “Shechtmanite quasicrystals are no mere curiosity. The study of quasicrystals has tied together two existing branches of theory: the theory of metallic glasses and the mathematical theory of aperiodic tilings. In doing so it has brought new and powerful tools to bear on the study of metallic alloys. Questions about long- and short-range icosahedral order should occupy solid-state physicists and materials scientists for some time to come.”

Today, over 40 scientific books have been dedicated to quasiperiodic crystals, and the International Union of Crystallography has changed its basic definition of a crystal, reducing it to the ability to produce a clear-cut diffraction pattern and acknowledging that crystallographic order can be either periodic or aperiodic.

 
 

How one stone can change the world…

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1912. 36 years before Israel declared independence, a ceremony took place on the barren slopes of Mount Carmel near the port of Haifa, which was then occupied by the Ottoman Empire. Unknown to the Haifa community witnessing the event, this would be a milestone in history. This first cornerstone embodied an implausible vision of creating a world-class institute of scientific and technological education in the Holy Land.


The story of the “Technikum” the original German name of the Technion,  is a tale of the century. The second industrial revolution created the printing presses and communications infrastructure allowing Jews scattered across the globe to organize in face of rising anti-Semitism. As Jews were often barred from technical education, the establishment of a technical school was a first priority to rebuilding a Jewish homeland. The Technion was to become unique worldwide as a university that would precede, create, shape, and protect a modern state. 

The cornerstone laid on April 11, 1912, set in motion a century of progress responding to national and global needs. Technion would grow rapidly, becoming a global pioneer in fields such as biotechnology, stem cells, space, computer science, nanotechnology, and energy. Three Technion professors have won Nobel Prizes. As it celebrates its cornerstone centennial in 2012, Technion City is a thriving world center of research and teaching, with 12,850 students and 80 graduate programs trailblazing excellence in research and teaching for the benefit of humanity.

Chemotherapy… cancer cells on the run.

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Researchers from Technion and Utrecht University in the Netherlands show that chemotherapy drugs can increase the risk of a metastic process in mice
Researchers from the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine at the Technion and from Utrecht University in the Netherlands showed that chemotherapy drugs, beyond their ability to kill tumor cells, are also able to increase the risk of a metastic process in mice. A number of different mechanisms have been suggested in order to explain the metastic process after chemotherapy and it may be that these mechanisms coexist. Dr. Yuval Shaked of the Technion and Prof. Emile Voest of Utrecht University published their findings in the scientific journal, Cancer Research.
Researchers in Dr. Yuval Shaked’s laboratory have been working for several years on trying to understand how cancer cells successfully escape conventional therapy and why they can develop resistance to different types of therapies. In opposition to other studies in the field, which generally concentrate on the ability of cancer cells  to develop resistance to therapy, this lab focuses on a different area: the working hypothesis is that in addition to changes initiated in the cancer cells following therapy, other cells in the host – the human body – also change, and are liable, in effect, to contribute to tumor growth, and the development of resistance to treatment. In other words, the tumor “calls” for help following treatment and the host cells respond to this call.
In practice, this group previously showed that the process of new blood vessel creation in cancer – a critical process in tumor development – becomes aggressive specifically after anti-cancer treatment, e.g., after chemotherapy. The creation of new blood vessels during cancer growth is a well-known process but in earlier research by this group, they found that the generation of blood vessels in cancer becomes significant and intensive after different chemotherapy treatments. As a result, this can explain, at least in part,  the success of therapies that incapacitate new blood vessels only when combined with different chemotherapy treatments but not when administered alone. This work, which was published a number of years ago in the scientific journal Cancer Cell, motivated Dr. Shaked’s lab to continue investigating the link between anti-cancer treatment and the way cancer cells respond during different stages of therapy – the response requires the assistance of various cells found in the host.

“if we find the factors that are secreted by the host and that contribute to the growth of metastases after chemotherapy, then we will have new tools and new cancer targets that are yet to be identified.”
Recently, two papers were published in Cancer Research by two separate teams of researchers – one by the Technion (Dr. Yuval Shaked) and the second by a team from Utrecht University (Prof. Emile Voest). The papers showed that chemotherapy drugs, asides from their ability to kill tumor cells, are also able to increase the risk of metastatic spread in mice. A number of different mechanisms have been suggested for explaining the metastatic spread process following chemotherapy, and it is likely that these mechanisms coexist.
Dr. Svetlana Gingis-Velitski,  the leading researcher in the Technion’s team, demonstrated that plasma from mice primed with chemotherapy drugs cause cancer cells to undergo a process similar to that of metastatic cells. She found that one reason for this phenomenon was the activation of different bone marrow cells that colonize the treated  tumor and secrete enzymes that break up the extracellular matrix, and thereby contribute to the invasiveness of cancer cells and their movement within the tissue until they reach different areas, in other words, become metastases. When she used materials or drugs that neutralized these enzymes, the chemotherapy treatment did not cause metastasis spread.
These findings suggest that chemotherapy has negative side effects not only in terms of its toxicity but that it is even able to increase the factors contributing to processes in the host that bring about a significant contribution to the tumors, and it is very likely that these phenomena contribute to the decrease in effectiveness of chemotherapy in patients. In different clinical cases it was found that sometimes anti-cancer drug therapy does indeed help in significantly reducing the size of the primary tumor, but for some reason, patients’ survival is not extended despite the use of the effective therapy. Possibly, the secretions of various factors by the host, as described in the above papers, contribute to the metastic process that harms the patient and does not extend their survival.
Dr. Yuval Shaked, the research supervisor and the laboratory head, said that “if we find the factors that are secreted by the host and that contribute to the growth of metastases after chemotherapy, then we will have new tools and new cancer targets that are yet to be identified. Blocking these factors in combination with conventional therapy, i.e., chemotherapy, is liable to significantly increase the success of this treatment.”
Dr. John Ebos of the Department of Medicine at Roosevelt Park Cancer Institute agrees that the findings of the two groups of researchers are very important and that they explain why the efficacy of chemotherapy is limited in certain patients and are, therefore, important in helping to find out how to improve the effectiveness of this treatment.
Prof. Sara Courtneidge of the Medical Research Institute in Stanford-Barnham said: “I hope that these papers encourage additional research that will investigate the mechanisms creating metastatic tumor growth that are the results of chemotherapy and consider integrated treatment in light of these mechanisms, because physicians will not stop using chemotherapy.”
Actually, Dr. Shaked’s laboratory, in combination with a number of hospitals in the country and around the world, primarily Rambam Medical Center in Haifa and the Director of Oncology, Prof. Abraham Kuten, HaEmek Medical Center in Afula (Dr. David Loven), as well as the European Institute of Oncology in Milan, Italy (Prof. Francesco Bertolini) are working together in order to investigate whether these worrisome findings in mice also appear prominently in clinical practice and if so, whether these factors can be used to predict which patients will benefit from  what kind of chemotherapy.
Additionally, students, post-doctoral fellows, and employees in Dr. Shaked’s lab – Dr. Ella Fremder, Tali Voloshin, Rotem Bril, Dror Alishekevitz, Michal Munster, Liat Benayoun, and Valeria Miller – are all working hard today on other host components that are likely to be involved in the above mentioned findings. “We are in the midst of a process of establishing a consortium to continue the research on the cancerous effects of chemotherapy drugs and to identify new treatment targets,” says Dr. Shaked. “The consortium at the moment includes academic teams and private companies from Sweden, Greece, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, and, of course, Israel.”

Chemotherapy… cancer cells on the run.

2 Comments

Researchers from Technion and Utrecht University in the Netherlands show that chemotherapy drugs can increase the risk of a metastic process in mice
Researchers from the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine at the Technion and from Utrecht University in the Netherlands showed that chemotherapy drugs, beyond their ability to kill tumor cells, are also able to increase the risk of a metastic process in mice. A number of different mechanisms have been suggested in order to explain the metastic process after chemotherapy and it may be that these mechanisms coexist. Dr. Yuval Shaked of the Technion and Prof. Emile Voest of Utrecht University published their findings in the scientific journal, Cancer Research.
Researchers in Dr. Yuval Shaked’s laboratory have been working for several years on trying to understand how cancer cells successfully escape conventional therapy and why they can develop resistance to different types of therapies. In opposition to other studies in the field, which generally concentrate on the ability of cancer cells  to develop resistance to therapy, this lab focuses on a different area: the working hypothesis is that in addition to changes initiated in the cancer cells following therapy, other cells in the host – the human body – also change, and are liable, in effect, to contribute to tumor growth, and the development of resistance to treatment. In other words, the tumor “calls” for help following treatment and the host cells respond to this call.
In practice, this group previously showed that the process of new blood vessel creation in cancer – a critical process in tumor development – becomes aggressive specifically after anti-cancer treatment, e.g., after chemotherapy. The creation of new blood vessels during cancer growth is a well-known process but in earlier research by this group, they found that the generation of blood vessels in cancer becomes significant and intensive after different chemotherapy treatments. As a result, this can explain, at least in part,  the success of therapies that incapacitate new blood vessels only when combined with different chemotherapy treatments but not when administered alone. This work, which was published a number of years ago in the scientific journal Cancer Cell, motivated Dr. Shaked’s lab to continue investigating the link between anti-cancer treatment and the way cancer cells respond during different stages of therapy – the response requires the assistance of various cells found in the host.

“if we find the factors that are secreted by the host and that contribute to the growth of metastases after chemotherapy, then we will have new tools and new cancer targets that are yet to be identified.”
Recently, two papers were published in Cancer Research by two separate teams of researchers – one by the Technion (Dr. Yuval Shaked) and the second by a team from Utrecht University (Prof. Emile Voest). The papers showed that chemotherapy drugs, asides from their ability to kill tumor cells, are also able to increase the risk of metastatic spread in mice. A number of different mechanisms have been suggested for explaining the metastatic spread process following chemotherapy, and it is likely that these mechanisms coexist.
Dr. Svetlana Gingis-Velitski,  the leading researcher in the Technion’s team, demonstrated that plasma from mice primed with chemotherapy drugs cause cancer cells to undergo a process similar to that of metastatic cells. She found that one reason for this phenomenon was the activation of different bone marrow cells that colonize the treated  tumor and secrete enzymes that break up the extracellular matrix, and thereby contribute to the invasiveness of cancer cells and their movement within the tissue until they reach different areas, in other words, become metastases. When she used materials or drugs that neutralized these enzymes, the chemotherapy treatment did not cause metastasis spread.
These findings suggest that chemotherapy has negative side effects not only in terms of its toxicity but that it is even able to increase the factors contributing to processes in the host that bring about a significant contribution to the tumors, and it is very likely that these phenomena contribute to the decrease in effectiveness of chemotherapy in patients. In different clinical cases it was found that sometimes anti-cancer drug therapy does indeed help in significantly reducing the size of the primary tumor, but for some reason, patients’ survival is not extended despite the use of the effective therapy. Possibly, the secretions of various factors by the host, as described in the above papers, contribute to the metastic process that harms the patient and does not extend their survival.
Dr. Yuval Shaked, the research supervisor and the laboratory head, said that “if we find the factors that are secreted by the host and that contribute to the growth of metastases after chemotherapy, then we will have new tools and new cancer targets that are yet to be identified. Blocking these factors in combination with conventional therapy, i.e., chemotherapy, is liable to significantly increase the success of this treatment.”
Dr. John Ebos of the Department of Medicine at Roosevelt Park Cancer Institute agrees that the findings of the two groups of researchers are very important and that they explain why the efficacy of chemotherapy is limited in certain patients and are, therefore, important in helping to find out how to improve the effectiveness of this treatment.
Prof. Sara Courtneidge of the Medical Research Institute in Stanford-Barnham said: “I hope that these papers encourage additional research that will investigate the mechanisms creating metastatic tumor growth that are the results of chemotherapy and consider integrated treatment in light of these mechanisms, because physicians will not stop using chemotherapy.”
Actually, Dr. Shaked’s laboratory, in combination with a number of hospitals in the country and around the world, primarily Rambam Medical Center in Haifa and the Director of Oncology, Prof. Abraham Kuten, HaEmek Medical Center in Afula (Dr. David Loven), as well as the European Institute of Oncology in Milan, Italy (Prof. Francesco Bertolini) are working together in order to investigate whether these worrisome findings in mice also appear prominently in clinical practice and if so, whether these factors can be used to predict which patients will benefit from  what kind of chemotherapy.
Additionally, students, post-doctoral fellows, and employees in Dr. Shaked’s lab – Dr. Ella Fremder, Tali Voloshin, Rotem Bril, Dror Alishekevitz, Michal Munster, Liat Benayoun, and Valeria Miller – are all working hard today on other host components that are likely to be involved in the above mentioned findings. “We are in the midst of a process of establishing a consortium to continue the research on the cancerous effects of chemotherapy drugs and to identify new treatment targets,” says Dr. Shaked. “The consortium at the moment includes academic teams and private companies from Sweden, Greece, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, and, of course, Israel.”

Competition! Win a Quasicrystal Nobel Laureate Tie!

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Science just got Smarter!

Win a Quasicrystal Nobel Prize Tie/Scarf!




WIN an exclusive quasicrystal tie or scarf to celebrate the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry!!!

This is your chance to get hold of a limited edition Quasicrystal tie. The tie was Commissioned by Technion President Prof. Peretz Lavie for Distinguished Prof. Dan Shechtman on the occasion of his 70th birthday in January 2011. When the phonecall came from Stockholm in October 2011 informing Technion of Shechtman’s receipt of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, the tie was rushed into use. 



Review competition entries so far.


How to Enter


1. Go to Technion LIVE on Facebook, and ‘Like‘ the Page – if you are not yet a friend (you will find the button at the top).

OR find us on Twitter: and post your answer as a Tweet to  @TechnionLIVE with the tag #TechnionNobel.
OR if you really don’t do Twitter or Facebook, post your response in the talkback below… but make sure you include your email so we can contact the winners!
2. From 25/11/2011 until 25/12/2011, the Facebook Wall will show posts of friends and the Tweets will be logged at http://www.TechnionIIT.com. You need to post your answer to ONE of the following:

   i) Your slogan to celebrate the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2011 (from 2-20 words) – i.e. “A Nobel Matter” (We could include winners in the 2012 Technion President’s Report!)

   ii) Your congratulation/blessing to Prof. Shechtman on reception of the 2011 Nobel Prize.

   iii) Your answer to the following question: What would you do with your Quasicrystal Tie/Scarf? Your answer can be straight, funny, or creative. It’s your neck on the block!
3. On 01/01/2012, the best answers will be selected (one from each category) and the winners will be contacted to send shipping information for the tie/scarf.

Competition Rules

1. The Competition is open to all Facebook friends from around the world, with the exclusion of Technion employees.

2. The Competition will run from 25/11/2011-25/12/2011 inclusive to Israeli time. After closure, no new entries will be accepted.

3. The entries will be judged by Technion President Prof. Peretz Lavie, Nobel Laureate Prof. Dan Shechtman, a panel from Technion’s Division of Public Relations and Marketing Company VeReCreations.

4. The three Winners will be announced and contacted on 01/01/2012

Science just got Smarter!!!



Prime Minister of Israel Benyamin Netanyahu gets Smart
with a Technion Quasicrystal Tie.
The Quasicrystal Tie Competition is run by the Technion Division of Public Affairs and Resource Development.

Competition! Win a Quasicrystal Nobel Laureate Tie!

10 Comments
Science just got Smarter!

Win a Quasicrystal Nobel Prize Tie/Scarf!




WIN an exclusive quasicrystal tie or scarf to celebrate the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry!!!

This is your chance to get hold of a limited edition Quasicrystal tie. The tie was Commissioned by Technion President Prof. Peretz Lavie for Distinguished Prof. Dan Shechtman on the occasion of his 70th birthday in January 2011. When the phonecall came from Stockholm in October 2011 informing Technion of Shechtman’s receipt of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, the tie was rushed into use. 



Review competition entries so far.


How to Enter


1. Go to Technion LIVE on Facebook, and ‘Like‘ the Page – if you are not yet a friend (you will find the button at the top).

OR find us on Twitter: and post your answer as a Tweet to  @TechnionLIVE with the tag #TechnionNobel.
OR if you really don’t do Twitter or Facebook, post your response in the talkback below… but make sure you include your email so we can contact the winners!
2. From 25/11/2011 until 25/12/2011, the Facebook Wall will show posts of friends and the Tweets will be logged at http://www.TechnionIIT.com. You need to post your answer to ONE of the following:

   i) Your slogan to celebrate the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2011 (from 2-20 words) – i.e. “A Nobel Matter” (We could include winners in the 2012 Technion President’s Report!)

   ii) Your congratulation/blessing to Prof. Shechtman on reception of the 2011 Nobel Prize.

   iii) Your answer to the following question: What would you do with your Quasicrystal Tie/Scarf? Your answer can be straight, funny, or creative. It’s your neck on the block!
3. On 01/01/2012, the best answers will be selected (one from each category) and the winners will be contacted to send shipping information for the tie/scarf.

Competition Rules

1. The Competition is open to all Facebook friends from around the world, with the exclusion of Technion employees.

2. The Competition will run from 25/11/2011-25/12/2011 inclusive to Israeli time. After closure, no new entries will be accepted.

3. The entries will be judged by Technion President Prof. Peretz Lavie, Nobel Laureate Prof. Dan Shechtman, a panel from Technion’s Division of Public Relations and Marketing Company VeReCreations.

4. The three Winners will be announced and contacted on 01/01/2012

Science just got Smarter!!!



Prime Minister of Israel Benyamin Netanyahu gets Smart
with a Technion Quasicrystal Tie.
The Quasicrystal Tie Competition is run by the Technion Division of Public Affairs and Resource Development.

Clean Hydogen Energy Solutions

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Stop Press! December 5th, 2011: Dr. Avner Rothschild, will lecture on: Metal-oxide photoelectrodes for solar-induced water splitting: turning rust to gold. This seminar is part of the Technion-Monash: Nanosceince tele-seminar series, which is a cooperation of the Technion and the University of Melbourne in Australia. The seminar will take place at the Cooper building (main building of Industrial Engineering, Technion City), room 112, at 8 a.m.

Energy Transformers
By Georgina Johnson

Dr Avner Rothschild is working on new, efficient ways of using sunlight to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen is a clean and potentially abundant alternative to fossil fuels. Its large-scale use could lead to the sustainable development, energy independence, and security of many nations.

One of many powerful scientists tackling basic and applied problems in energy science and technology, Dr Avner Rothschild, of the Grand Technion Energy Program (GTEP) and the Faculty of Materials Engineering, has a penchant for high targets. Not only has his life-time hobby been climbing impossible cliff-faces, he also has a powerful vocation to make solar-produced hydrogen a viable future energy alternative.

Rothschild’s group in Technion’s Electroceramics Materials and Devices Laboratory is part of a large European collaborative project looking to split water into hydrogen and oxygen using the energy of the sun – thus creating a 100 percent clean fuel. “We try to produce hydrogen and oxygen by splitting water. The process is possible – it works – but the problem is low efficiency.”

His team is developing nanostructured metal-oxides for applications in environmental and energy conversion technologies. The group has a strong expertise in investigating electronic and ionic defects in semiconducting and mixed ionic-electronic conducting oxides and their effect on transport properties and electrochemical processes.

The scientific barrier is efficiency, says Rothschild, who sees the promise in the development of new electroceramic materials. “We are engineering tandem cells – several different cells, each one with a different aspect of energy from the sun. We are aiming at 5,000 hours stable operation at 10 percent efficiency.”

“We started this project at 3 percent efficiency,” says Rothschild. “Now we are at 5 percent. Our goal is still more – 10 percent – but it is within reach.”


NanoPECs

NanoPEC (Nanostructured Photoelectrodes for Energy Conversion) is the European consortium at work with Dr Avner Rothschild to crack the codes of clean hydrogen production and complement Rothschild’s studies in new materials with research from basic science to integration of total systems. The consortium, including groups from Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, and Switzerland which meet four times a year, is under the scientific leadership of Prof. Michael Grätzel, director of the Laboratory of Photonics and Interfaces (LPI) of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne. In 2007, Grätzel received Technion’s prestigious Harvey Prize in science and technology and recently, in June 2010, the Finnish Millennium Technology Prize – the largest technology prize in the world – for development of dye-sensitized solar cells.

Photoelectrochemical cells (PECs) can split water directly into H2 and O2 via photoelectrolysis, and in so doing provide a basis for a renewable, clean production of hydrogen from sunlight. They rely on a photoactive material – a semiconductor – capable of harvesting and converting solar energy into stored chemical fuel, namely, hydrogen. Very little hydrogen gas is present in Earth’s atmosphere, but hydrogen is locked up in enormous quantities in water, hydrocarbons (such as methane), and other organic matter. Efficiently producing hydrogen from these compounds is one of the challenges of using hydrogen as a fuel.

More on the multimedia Technion-Monash intiative.

Clean Hydogen Energy Solutions

Leave a comment
Stop Press! December 5th, 2011: Dr. Avner Rothschild, will lecture on: Metal-oxide photoelectrodes for solar-induced water splitting: turning rust to gold. This seminar is part of the Technion-Monash: Nanosceince tele-seminar series, which is a cooperation of the Technion and the University of Melbourne in Australia. The seminar will take place at the Cooper building (main building of Industrial Engineering, Technion City), room 112, at 8 a.m.

Energy Transformers
By Georgina Johnson

Dr Avner Rothschild is working on new, efficient ways of using sunlight to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen is a clean and potentially abundant alternative to fossil fuels. Its large-scale use could lead to the sustainable development, energy independence, and security of many nations.

One of many powerful scientists tackling basic and applied problems in energy science and technology, Dr Avner Rothschild, of the Grand Technion Energy Program (GTEP) and the Faculty of Materials Engineering, has a penchant for high targets. Not only has his life-time hobby been climbing impossible cliff-faces, he also has a powerful vocation to make solar-produced hydrogen a viable future energy alternative.

Rothschild’s group in Technion’s Electroceramics Materials and Devices Laboratory is part of a large European collaborative project looking to split water into hydrogen and oxygen using the energy of the sun – thus creating a 100 percent clean fuel. “We try to produce hydrogen and oxygen by splitting water. The process is possible – it works – but the problem is low efficiency.”

His team is developing nanostructured metal-oxides for applications in environmental and energy conversion technologies. The group has a strong expertise in investigating electronic and ionic defects in semiconducting and mixed ionic-electronic conducting oxides and their effect on transport properties and electrochemical processes.

The scientific barrier is efficiency, says Rothschild, who sees the promise in the development of new electroceramic materials. “We are engineering tandem cells – several different cells, each one with a different aspect of energy from the sun. We are aiming at 5,000 hours stable operation at 10 percent efficiency.”

“We started this project at 3 percent efficiency,” says Rothschild. “Now we are at 5 percent. Our goal is still more – 10 percent – but it is within reach.”


NanoPECs

NanoPEC (Nanostructured Photoelectrodes for Energy Conversion) is the European consortium at work with Dr Avner Rothschild to crack the codes of clean hydrogen production and complement Rothschild’s studies in new materials with research from basic science to integration of total systems. The consortium, including groups from Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, and Switzerland which meet four times a year, is under the scientific leadership of Prof. Michael Grätzel, director of the Laboratory of Photonics and Interfaces (LPI) of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne. In 2007, Grätzel received Technion’s prestigious Harvey Prize in science and technology and recently, in June 2010, the Finnish Millennium Technology Prize – the largest technology prize in the world – for development of dye-sensitized solar cells.

Photoelectrochemical cells (PECs) can split water directly into H2 and O2 via photoelectrolysis, and in so doing provide a basis for a renewable, clean production of hydrogen from sunlight. They rely on a photoactive material – a semiconductor – capable of harvesting and converting solar energy into stored chemical fuel, namely, hydrogen. Very little hydrogen gas is present in Earth’s atmosphere, but hydrogen is locked up in enormous quantities in water, hydrocarbons (such as methane), and other organic matter. Efficiently producing hydrogen from these compounds is one of the challenges of using hydrogen as a fuel.

More on the multimedia Technion-Monash intiative.

The Great Leviathan… Engineering Israel’s Energy Hope

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Natural Gas and Energy Engineering:
Technion Leads the Way

From: Technion Focus.


By: Prof. Shlomo Maital

“If Moses had turned right instead of left when he led his people out of the Sinai Desert,” goes an old joke, “the Jews would have had the oil and the Arabs would have ended up with the oranges.” We can’t tell that joke any more. Two major gas fields have been discovered offshore, in the Mediterranean, named Tamar and Leviathan. The latter is said to be the biggest gas find in the world in a decade.

Leviathan means “whale” in Hebrew and indeed is a whale of a find – new estimates show Leviathan has some 16 trillion cubic feet of gas, worth (at current European market prices, one cent per cubic foot) over $160 b. The Tamar gas field has an estimated eight trillion cubic feet of gas; it is located 90 km (54 miles) offshore, three miles deep, and its gas will reach Haifa in 2013. Leviathan is 130 km (78 miles) offshore. Many experts believe that in addition to the gas, there is also offshore oil.

The question now fiercely debated, is, what should Israel do with this new, incredible windfall? Liquify it and export it? Use it for gas-based industries, like petrochemicals? But first, a more pressing dilemma exists. Where will Israel find the hundreds of petroleum and natural gas engineers needed to bring the gas to shore safely and efficiently, and then process it optimally? This is a huge, enormously difficult and extremely costly challenge. Perhaps because Moses made that wrong turn, Israeli universities do not teach petroleum engineering.

That is, until now.

At the initiative of Technion President Prof. Peretz Lavie and Senior Executive Vice President Prof. Paul Feigin, Technion has moved with alacrity to launch a Master of Engineering program in Energy Engineering, with specialization in natural gas and petroleum engineering. The program is open for enrolment and formal studies will begin on December 28, 2011. For 18 months, some 25 engineers will study drilling engineering; production, transportation and storage engineering; or reservoir management, at their choice. Haifa University is an active collaborator through its Department of Marine Geosciences.

As Feigin notes, “the efficient, safe and environmentally responsible exploitation of [Israel’s] natural gas reserves is the major engineering challenge facing the State of Israel in the coming decades. The Technion, as it has done throughout its history, is taking the lead in providing the education and developing the know-how in order to meet this challenge.”

The director of the new program is Prof. Yair Ein-Eli of the Faculty of Materials Engineering. I asked him where the graduates of the program will be employed. He told me they would work for exploration companies (there may be vast additional reservoirs of oil and gas yet undiscovered), drilling groups, consulting companies, entities that process, transport and distribute the gas, and of course, for governmental ministries (Infrastructure, Finance, and Industry).

Finding top experts suitable to teach in this program was not easy. Technion found them at Technion itself, and at Haifa University, as well as at America’s University of Houston and Colorado School of Mines, and Norwegian Technological University. Both the U.S. and Norway have vast experience in exploiting oil and gas reserves.

Technion has a long history of anticipating Israel’s needs for engineering skills and with vision, supplying them. In November 1950, Prof. Sydney Goldstein, then head of the Aeronautical Research Council of Great Britain, arrived in Haifa to become dean of Technion’s fledgling Aeronautical Engineering Faculty. For a nation with barely a million people, and per capita GDP of $1,500, some thought this Faculty was folly. But 38 years later, on September 19, 1988, Israel became the eighth country in the world to launch a satellite. The effort was led by Technion-trained aeronautical engineers and students. Today space is a potential growth industry for Israel.

Technion petroleum and gas engineers will bring home the gas. Technion chemical engineers will show Israel how to best exploit this resource. And Technion graduates in management will lead the businesses that do so.

We owe Moses an apology for that tired joke. He knew precisely where he was going after all. In the end, we got the oranges – and the gas and oil as well.

Prof. Emeritus Shlomo Maital is a senior research fellow at Samuel Neaman Institute for National Policy Research, Technion. This article is based in part on Maital’s Marketplace column, Jerusalem Report, May 9, 2011.
© 2011 Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Division of Publ