פרופ' אבנר רוטשילד

Prof. Avner Rothschild
+972-4-8294576
avnerrot@technion.ac.il
http://emd.net.technion.ac.il/
De Jour, 608

Avner Rothschild is a professor at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering of the Technion. He graduated from the Technion in 2003 and had a postdoc at MIT (2003 – 2006). Since 2006 he is a faculty member at the Technion, and the head of the Electrochemical Materials & Devices research group. His research focuses on electrochemical and photoelectrochemical materials and devices for water splitting as a means of sustainable production of clean hydrogen fuel from renewable energies such as solar and wind. Professor Rothschild is one of the co-founders of H2Pro, a startup company that develops a transformative water splitting technology for wide-scale production of sustainable hydrogen fuel. He was a member of several European consortia, and currently (2020) he holds an ERC grant for research on ultrathin film absorbers for solar water splitting and an ERC-POC grant for photoelectrochemical hydrogen production from H2S waste products.

ACADEMIC DEGRESS

  • PhD, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, 2003
  • BSc in Materials Engineering, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, 1997
  • BA in Physics, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, 1997

ACADEMIC APPOINTMENTS

  • Full professor, Department of Materials Science & Engineering, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology (2018 – to date)
  • Associate professor, Department of Materials Science & Engineering, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology (2012 – 2018)
  • Senior lecturer, Department of Materials Science & Engineering, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology (2006 – 2012)
  • Postdoctoral research associate, Department of Materials Science & Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2003 – 2006)

SELECTED HONORS & AWARDS

  • Hershel Rich Innovation Award (2018)
  • Kavli fellow of the United States’ National Academy of Sciences (2017)
  • The Henry Taub Prize for Academic Excellence (2017)
  • Uzi & Michal Halevy Award for Innovative Applied Engineering (2015)
  • Theeman Scholarship, Technion Society of Australia (2012)
  • Hershel Rich Innovation Award (2011)
  • Yemini Environmental Sciences Fellowship, Wolf Foundation (2008)
  • Alon Fellowship, The Council for Higher Education (2007 – 2009)
  • Horev Fellow, Technion Leaders in Science and Technology (2006 – 2008)
  • Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellowship (2003 – 2004)

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Co-founder and advisor, H2Pro, a start-up company for hydrogen production by water splitting (2018 – to date)

TEACHING EXPERIENCE:

  • Solar Cells (318126)
  • Solid State Electrochemistry (317000)
  • Properties of Electronic Materials (315030)
  • Ceramic Materials (314311)
  • Introduction to Materials Engineering (314533)
  • Clean Energy Technologies (518001)
  • Advanced Laboratory in Materials Engineering I & II (315001 & 315002)
  • Decoupled photoelectrochemical water splitting system for centralized hydrogen production, Joule (2020, DOI: 10.1016/j.joule.2019.12.006).
  • Decoupled hydrogen and oxygen evolution by a two-step electrochemical – chemical cycle for efficient overall water splitting, Nature Energy 4, 786–795 (2019).
  • The “rust” challenge: On the correlations between electronic structure, excited state dynamics and photoelectrochemical performance of hematite photoanodes for solar water splitting, Advanced Materials 30, 1706577 (2018).
  • The spatial collection efficiency of photogenerated charge carriers in photovoltaic and photoelectrochemical cells, Joule 2, 210-224 (2018).
  • Two-site H2O2 photo-oxidation on haematite photoanodes, Nature Communications 9, 4060 (2018).
  • Film flip and transfer process to enhance light harvesting in ultrathin absorber films on specular back-reflectors, Advanced Materials 30, 1802781 (2018).
  • Photoelectrochemical water splitting in separate oxygen and hydrogen cells, Nature Materials 16, 646–651 (2017).
  • Beating the efficiency of photovoltaics-powered electrolysis with tandem cell photoelectrolysis, ACS Energy Letters 2, 45-51 (2017).
  • Heterogeneous doping to improve the performance of thin film hematite photoanodes for solar water splitting, ACS Energy Letters 1, 827-833 (2016).
  • Hybrid bio-photo-electro-chemical cells for solar water splitting, Nature Communications 7, 12552 (2016).
  • High solar flux concentration water splitting with hematite (a-Fe2O3) photo-anodes, Advanced Energy Materials 6, 1500817 (2016).
  • On the solar to hydrogen conversion efficiency of photoelectrodes for water splitting, The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters 5, 3330−3334 (2014).
  • Identifying champion nanostructures for solar water splitting, Nature Materials 12, 842–849 (2013).
  • Resonant light trapping in ultrathin films for water splitting, Nature Materials 12, 158-164 (2013).
  • Probing the photoelectrochemical properties of Hematite (a-Fe2O3) electrodes using hydrogen peroxide as a hole scavenger, Energy & Environmental Science 4, 958-964 (2011).
Solid-state electrochemistry; Defect chemistry and transport properties of metal-oxides; semiconducting metal-oxides and their application in electronic and optoelectronic devices; Metal-oxide thin films; Pulsed laser deposition (PLD); Nanostructured materials: gas sensors, photoelectrodes and photocatalysts; Materials and devices for solar energy conversion and storage: photovoltaic and photoelectrochemical solar cells; Nanophotonics: photon management in solar cells, extremely thin absorbers; Materials, processes and systems for hydrogen production: alkaline electrolysis, advanced electrolysis processes, nickel hydroxide based electrodes.