Lilac Amirav

The solar-driven photocatalytic splitting of water into hydrogen and oxygen is a potential source of clean and renewable fuels. However, four decades of global research have proven this multi-step reaction to be highly challenging. The design of effective artificial photo-catalytic systems will depend on our ability to correlate the photocatalyst structure, composition, and morphology with its activity.
The group’s research is concerned with unique design of innovative nano scale particles, which harness nano phenomena for improved activity, and methodologies for the construction of sophisticated heterostructures tailored for photocatalysis and energy conversion. The laboratory’s cutting-edge synthetic effort is combined with fundamental research focused on the dynamic and mechanism of photo-induced charge transfer processes, across the different components of 1the photocatalyst system and further into the solution.

Figure caption: Illustration of a nanoscale photocatalyst composed of a CdSe quantum dot (green) embedded in a CdS nano-rod (yellow) with a platinum particle on its opposite tip (purple). This system set a record for the photocatalytic water splitting reduction half reaction with a perfect, 100%, photon to hydrogen conversion efficiency.

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, 3, 19679-19682.

Philip Kalisman, Yifat Nakibli and Lilac Amirav*; “Perfect Photon-to-Hydrogen Conversion Efficiency”. Nano Letters, 2016, 16 (3), 1776-1781.

Yifat Nakibli and Lilac Amirav*; “Selective Growth of Ni Tips on Nanorod Photocatalysts”. Chem. Mater., 2016, 28 (13), 4524-2527.

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.

Sandip Kumar Pahari, Shunit Olszakier, Itamar Kahn, Lilac Amirav* “Magneto-Fluorescent Yolk-Shell Nanoparticles”. Chem. Mater. 2018, 30 (3), 775-780.

Firdoz Shaik, Imanuel Peer, Prashant K. Jain, and Lilac Amirav*; Plasmon-Enhanced Multicarrier Photocatalysis, Nano Lett. 2018, 18 (7), 4370-4376.

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.

En: https://kids.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/frym.2020.00039

He: https://kids.frontiersin.org/he/article/10.3389/frym.2020.00039-he