Associate Prof. Lilac Amirav
Faculty:
Chemistry
Main energy field:
Renewable Energy Sources, Alternative Fuels, Photocatalysis
About:
Post-doc 2011, with Prof. Alivisatos, UC Berkeley. Ph.D. 2007, Technion, Physical Chemistry.
B.Sc. 1999, Tel Aviv University, Chemistry.
Research Area in Energy:
Solar Hydrogen production
Energy Storage
Research Interests:
Associate Prof. Amirav is passionate about addressing scientific questions of fundamental importance and global impact. She is particularly interested in photocatalysis on the nano scale and related photophysical and photochemical phenomena. Her research is concerned with the design, synthesis and characterization of innovative multi-component nanoparticle heterostructures, tailored for photocatalysis and energy conversion. A prime example is the solar-driven photocatalytic splitting of water into hydrogen and oxygen, which provide potentially a clean and renewable fuel. Such solar-to-fuel energy conversion alleviates the energy storage problem, since fuel (chemical energy) can be stored more easily than either electricity or heat.
The synthetic effort is combined with fundamental research focused on the dynamics and mechanism of photo-induced charge transfer processes, across the different components of the photocatalyst system and further into the solution. Emphasis is given to single particle, in-situ measurements.
Selected Publications:
Agosti Amedeo, Nakibli Yifat, Amirav Lilac, Bergamini Giacomo “Photosynthetic H2 Generation and Organic Transformations with CdSe@CdS-Pt Nanorods for Highly Efficient Solar-to-Chemical Energy Conversion”, Nano energy, 2020, 70, 104510.
Firdoz Shaik, Imanuel Peer, Prashant K. Jain, and Lilac Amirav “Plasmon-Enhanced Multicarrier Photocatalysis”, Nano Lett. 2018, 18 (7), 4370-4376.
Yifat Nakibli, Yair Mazal, Yonatan Dubi, Maria Wächtler, and Lilac Amirav “Size Matters: Cocatalyst Size Effect on Charge Transfer and Photocatalytic Activity Size”, Nano Lett. 2018, 18 (1), 357–364. Journal IF 13.779.
Philip Kalisman, Yifat Nakibli and Lilac Amirav; “Perfect Photon-to-Hydrogen Conversion Efficiency”. Nano Letters, 2016, 16 (3), 1776-1781. Featured and highlighted in both scientific and main media press, in Israel and world wide, including Chemical & Engineering New (C&EN), Forbes, Phys.org, Science Alert, i24new, Ynet, Maariv, and about 20 other sources.
Yifat Nakibli and Lilac Amirav; “Selective Growth of Ni Tips on Nanorod Photocatalysts”. Chem. Mater., 2016, DOI: 10.1021/acs.chemmater.6b01482.
Lilac Amirav, Fadakemi Oba, Shaul Aloni and A. Paul Alivisatos; “Modular Synthesis of a Dual Metal – Dual Semiconductor Nano Heterostructure”, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2015, 24, 7007-7011.
Philip Kalisman, Yaron Kauffmann and Lilac Amirav; “Photochemical Oxidation on Nanorod Photocatalysts”. J. Mat. Chem. A. 2015, 3 (7), 3261-3265.
Yifat Nakibli, Philip Kalisman, and Lilac Amirav; “Less Is More: The Case of Metal Co-Catalyst” J. Phys. Chem. Lett. 2015, 6, 2265−2268.
Philip Kalisman, Lothar Houben, Eran Aronovitch, Yaron Kauffmann, Maya Bar-Sadan and Lilac Amirav*; “The Golden Gate to Photocatalytic Hydrogen Production”. J. Mat. Chem. A. 2015. 19679-19682.
Lilac Amirav and A. Paul Alivisatos; “Luminescence Studies of Individual Quantum Dot Photocatalysts”, JACS, 2013. 135, 13049-13053. Highlighted in Materials360: http://www.materials360online.com/
L. Amirav and A. Paul Alivisatos, “Photocatalytic Hydrogen Production with Tunable Nanorod Heterostructures”, J. Phys. Chem. Lett. 2010, 1, 1051-1054. Featured in “Discover” magazine, “Leaf Power” (June 2010).