Prof. Avner Rothschild

Faculty:

Materials Engineering

Main energy field:

Alternative Fuels

Energy Storage and Conversion

About:

Ph.D. 2003, Technion, Materials Engineering.
B.Sc. 1997, Technion, Materials Engineering.
B.A. 1997, Technion, Physics.

Yemini Environmental Sciences Fellowship (Wolf Foundation) – 2008.
Alon Fellowship (The Council for Higher Education), 2007-2009.
Horev Fellow “Leaders in Science and Technology” Program (Technion), 2006-2008.
Fullbright Post-Doctoral Fellowship, 2003-2004.

Research Area in Energy:

Conversion of solar energy to chemical or electrical energy.

Research Interests:

Water Splitting – Pioneering new approaches to the production of hydrogen from water using electrochemical and photoelectrochemical water splitting.

Photovoltaics – Semiconducting metal-oxide electrodes and pn junction solar cells.

Conversion of solar energy to chemical energy – Combined dissociation of CO2 and H2O to syngas using solar energy.

Fuel Cell Technologies – Solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC).

Selected Publications:

H. Dotan, N. Mathews, T. Hisatomi, M. Grätzel and A. Rothschild, On the solar to hydrogen conversion efficiency of photoelectrodes for water splitting, The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters 5, 3330−3334 (2014).

T.C.-J. Yang, Y. Kauffmann, L. Wu, Z. Lin, X. Jia, B. Puthen-Veettil, T. Zhang, G. Conibeer, I. Perez-Wurfl and A. Rothschild, In-situ high resolution transmission electron microscopy observation of silicon nanocrystal nucleation in SiO2 bilayered matrix, Applied Physics Letters 105, 053116 (2014).

S. C. Warren, K. Voïtchovsky, H. Dotan, C. Leroy, M. Cornuz, F. Stellacci, C. Hébert, A. Rothschild and M. Grätzel, Identifying champion nanostructures for solar water splitting, Nature Materials 12, 842–849 (2013).

H. Dotan, O. Kfir, E. Sharlin, O. Blank, M. Gross, I. Dumchin, G. Ankonina and A. Rothschild, Resonant light trapping in ultrathin films for water splitting, Nature Materials 12, 158-164 (2013).

T. Hisatomi, H. Dotan, M. M. Stefik, K. Sivula, A. Rothschild, S. Mhaisalkar, M. Grätzel and N. Mathews, Enhanced performance of ultrathin hematite photoanodes for water splitting enabled by using oxide underlayers as barrier layers for electron back injection, Advanced Materials 24, 2699-2702 (2012).

T. Vincent, M. Gross, H. Dotan and A. Rothschild, Thermally oxidized Iron oxide nanoarchitectures for hydrogen production by solar-induced water splitting, International Journal of Hydrogen Energy 37, 8102-8109 (2012).

H. Dotan, K. Sivula, M. Grätzel, A. Rothschild and S. C. Warren, Probing the photoelectrochemical properties of Hematite (a-Fe2O3) electrodes using hydrogen peroxide as a hole scavenger, Energy & Environmental Science 4, 958-964 (2011).