Using sunlight and ultrathin films of iron oxide, or rust, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology researchers have found a new way to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. The breakthrough, they say, could lead to less expensive, more efficient ways to store solar energy in the form of hydrogen-based fuels.
Using sunlight and ultrathin films of iron oxide, or rust, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology researchers have found a new way to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. The breakthrough, they say, could lead to less expensive, more efficient ways to store solar energy in the form of hydrogen-based fuels.
Technion GTEP pioneers national and global research collaboration into new solar fuels through I-CORE.
Our global future will be affected by our ability to create scientific and technological solutions to unlock new sources and methods of renewable energy. In Israel, regional instability is threatening energy sources and the cost of conventional fuels is multiplied.
At the Solar Fuels I-CORE, top Israeli scientists from Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology and the Weizmann Institute of Science have joined forces to create a synergy of expertise in order to generate clean, efficient energy from renewable sources. In addition, the Solar Fuels I-CORE is an Israeli multidisciplinary task force attracting returning Israeli energy scientists from across the world.
Through intense research, world-class facilities, a dynamic agenda of educational and outreach programs and global collaboration, the Solar FueIs I-CORE team is passionate about fulfilling the promise of paving the road towards a sustainable future for all humanity. Read More…
Technion GTEP pioneers national and global research collaboration into new solar fuels through I-CORE.
Our global future will be affected by our ability to create scientific and technological solutions to unlock new sources and methods of renewable energy. In Israel, regional instability is threatening energy sources and the cost of conventional fuels is multiplied.
At the Solar Fuels I-CORE, top Israeli scientists from Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology and the Weizmann Institute of Science have joined forces to create a synergy of expertise in order to generate clean, efficient energy from renewable sources. In addition, the Solar Fuels I-CORE is an Israeli multidisciplinary task force attracting returning Israeli energy scientists from across the world.
Through intense research, world-class facilities, a dynamic agenda of educational and outreach programs and global collaboration, the Solar FueIs I-CORE team is passionate about fulfilling the promise of paving the road towards a sustainable future for all humanity. Read More…
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.
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.
Technion graduate Dr. Joseph Cory is floating an intriguing idea: small lightweight balloons with a thin coating of photovoltaic cells.
Global warming, desertification, vastly accelerating levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, rapidly depleting fossil fuel reserves, the disaster of war triggered by energy scarcity, hunger, drought, rising petrol prices… there is no wonder that the word “sustainability” has become one of the most frequently-heard political buzz words in the western world.
It was in anticipation of the variety of future threats to Israel and to the planet that Technion took the initiative in 2007 to set up the Grand Technion Energy Program (GTEP). Under its auspices, Israel’s top minds from a variety of science and engineering faculties are given the facilities and opportunity to think together on how to meet the challenge of escalating global energy demand, and to do the science to turn a crisis into an opportunity.
“I am one of those that believe that we need to do something now, and quickly,” says Harry L. Tuller, Professor of Ceramics and Electronic Materials at MIT. Prof. Tuller was hosted at the Technion by his former post-doc student, Dr. Avner Rothschild of the Faculty of Materials Engineering and an active member of GTEP, and was speaking in the framework of the Israel Pollack Distinguished Lecture Series at Technion’s Faculty of Material Engineering in December 2010.
Prof. Tuller’s research team at MIT focuses on defects, transport and electronic structure of metal oxides and their integration into sensors; fuel cells; solar cells, and MEMS devices.
“We need an astronomical increase in sources of energy,” says Tuller, in the first of two lectures: Electroceramics – strategic materials in the quest to solve the energy crisis. “Energy is a crisis, but it is also a big opportunity. It stimulates you to do things… to do something great for humanity but also for the economy – and for the economic stimulation of Israel. The answers are in the materials. Scientists need to work fast to solve the energy crisis to create clean, affordable energy, to improve living standards and to diminish environmental impact.”
Beyond the rapid depletion of fossil fuels, which before vanishing completely, will involve an escalating price for power, Tuller showed a shocking map to the crowded lecture room of faculty and students. Highlighting the users, the map showed the western world lit up with massive consumption of energy, while the developing world is aiming to reach the same standard of living. As it stand, explains Tuller, we are in trouble as population increases, but given the developing world’s right to also have the luxuries of heat and light, the demand for global energy is going to escalate astronomically. China, for example, is adding an extra coal station each week, says Tuller.
With massive energy use comes a responsibility in first world nations for technological development. “The US are the heavyweights in using energy,” says Tuller, “If developing nations use energy like the US, we will need 6-7 times the power we use today – around 100 terawatts (100 terawatts is equivalent to 100,000 nuclear reactors).
In addition, says Tuller, the environmental and strategic implications of accelerating use of finite fossil fuels can be catastrophic, as seen by the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, and the cumulative effect of rising CO2 levels in the earth’s atmosphere over the past 40 years. “On 22nd December, 2003, the power grid around New York failed,” says Tuller, showing a slide of the Manhattan skyline in total darkness. “Amazingly, there was a 90% decrease in 24 hours of CO2 in the atmosphere – a dramatic correlation.”
Solar power could supply 600 TW of world energy needs, says Tuller, but the question is how fast scientists, industry and government can develop and implement it. Energy from biomass could supply 102 TW; hydroelectric 9 TW; geothermal 11.6 TW; and wind 2-3 TW.
It is therefore necessary, said Tuller to think in both short and long term. In the short term, to do the science to make the use of fossil fuels cleaner and more efficient, and to invest in processes such as thermoelectrics to capture wasted heat. In the long term, says Tuller, solar photovoltaics and hydrogen could give a tremendous alternative energy source.
According to the state-of-the-art right now, about 750,000 km2 (about the size of the state of Arizona) is the land mass needed to satisfy the energy needs of the US through solar power. To give perspective, this is about the same area presently used by highways, says Tuller. Thus at centers of research such as Tuller’s lab at MIT and Rothschild’s lab at the Technion, research is being done to meet the grand energy challenge through improved electroceramic materials for fuels cells and solar energy conversion.
Should Israel relax about the energy crisis, blessed as it is with its new found reserves of natural gas off its Mediterranean coast? “Gas may solve the strategic part of the problem for now,” says Tuller: “It is clean compared to coal or petroleum and is good for everything.” But in the long-term there is no option but to invest in the science to increase efficiency, transport and maximize the methods to harness the power of the sun
For a country this size, Israel has a large visibility in technology and innovation, says Tuller. “There is a high density of highly educated, very clever people. Technion – like MIT – plays a pivotal role as a meeting place for ideas in science and engineering. Other places can lack the insight as to how knowledge can be used and applied. Visible programs like The Grand Technion Energy Program are very useful to create new generations of people who are sensitive to core problem and focused on the challenge.
Tuller, who today has co-authored 40 books and published over 300 papers, spent his post-doc years at Technion – Israel Institute of Technology at the Faculty of Physics. “It was a changing experience,” he says. “There were a lot of possibilities to interact with different groups across the physics department and it broadened my perspective tremendously and extended my vision of things. It is a pleasure to come back home: a great honor.”
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An Israeli research team has manufactured new organic semiconductors using proteins designed from scratch in the lab and linking them together in precise chains to create electronic-grade material. The new semiconductors, called electronic peptides, could lead to lighter, cheaper and more flexible electronic devices within the next two years, the researchers say. The electronic peptides created by Professor Nir Tessler and colleagues at GTEP of theTechnion-Israel Institute of Technology could be used in full color, foldable LED displays with a sharper resolution than today’s computer screens, and large, flexible solar cells that spread flat and roll up like a blanket. The peptides could also be used in sensor devices that detect tiny amounts of disease molecules in the body or toxins in the environment. Researchers can construct the electronic peptides one building block at a time, which gives them precise control over the semiconductor’s properties, such as its ability to produce a particular color on a flat screen monitor. The block-by-block approach allows the peptide researcher “to prepare the material in the same way that electrical engineers at Intel or IBM prepare a circuit,” Tessler says. “We want 100 percent control that will lead to close to zero errors.” To build the electronic peptides, the Technion researchers began by imitating nature. In human cells and the rest of the biological world, peptides are created by linking together amino acids, the basic building blocks of proteins. In the lab, Tessler and others used an automatic peptide synthesizer – a computerized machine – to link together artificial combinations of amino acids and create new peptides with semiconductor properties. “Choosing the right building blocks will give you roughly the properties you are after, and choosing the right sequence [for the blocks] will give you exactly what you need,” Tessler explains. “The nice thing about peptides is that the complexity of attaching one building block to any other is the same complexity you find in LEGO bricks,” Tessler adds. “You use only one method to connect them all and you know very well how to connect them, with no need to invent a new chemical process every time you want a different sequence.” The precision manufacturing process creates “electronic grade” material, which means that the material will not lose its response to electrical signals over time like some other organic semiconductors, according to Tessler. Tessler says the peptides could be integrated into existing electronic devices, and are not intended as a replacement for the silicon-based circuitry in today’s computers. The most popular application for semiconductors like the peptides is in flat screen displays, since these semiconductors use less energy than the materials in current computer monitors. Laptop computers with peptide-powered flat screen displays, for instance, would need to have their batteries recharged less frequently. Professors Tessler, of the Technion Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Yoav Eichen of the Faculty of Chemistry and Gadi Schuster of the Faculty of Biology have received a patent on the electronic peptides, and a new Israeli company called Peptronics Ltd. will develop the technology for commercial purposes. “What we have to do now is invest a lot of hard work to fully realize the potential of this new technology. There is no doubt that we will run into problems sooner or later but so far, it’s working like magic,” Tessler says. |
PRESIDENT’S REPORT 2015