Center for Sustainable Materials
About
A sustainable future requires a series of new functional materials that provide for the needs of industry and society, while being resource efficient, non-toxic, and causing no harm to the environment. Such materials can support a wide array of sustainable activities and systems, including energy storage, carbon caption, converting solar energy into electricity, clean catalytic processes, and more.
At the Center for Sustainable Materials, researchers from across departments at Weizmann Institute focus on the introduction of new materials and production processes. Multidisciplinary projects involve the collaboration of a range of experts, including synthetic chemists, materials scientists, and theoretical and computational chemistry groups. Work includes the demonstration of novel systems that have orthogonal functionalities (e.g., light harvesting and charge storage) that can be used for the design of self-powered systems that collect water from air or for smart glass, and the development of recyclable supramolecular plastics, as well as biodegradable organic electronics, batteries, and more.
Prof. Milko van der Boom
Prof. Milko van der Boom received his BSc from the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, The Netherlands, and MSc in Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Amsterdam. He earned his PhD degree with distinction from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, working with Prof. David Milstein. After three years of postdoctoral research with Prof. Tobin J. Marks at Northwestern University in the US, he became a Faculty member in the Weizmann Institute's Department of Organic Chemistry.
He is currently the incumbent of the Bruce A. Pearlman Professorial Chair in Synthetic Organic Chemistry and the Head of the Department of Chemical Research Support at the Weizmann Institute. He has been awarded the Alon Fellowship from the Israel Council for Higher Education, the Gutwirth Award, and the Israel Chemical Society Prize for Young Scientists. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.
Research Highlights
- Surface chemistry
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The van der Boom lab is working on enabling and understanding new methodologies to fabricate molecular assemblies driven by intermolecular interactions is fundamental in chemistry. The group designs and studies supramolecular coordination polymers at surfaces that behave like supercapacitors, diodes, or exhibit electrochromic and charge-trapping behavior. Trapped charges can be released by light, exciting nanoscale layers of redox-active metal complexes open-up catalytic pathways for selective electron-transfer. The molecular assemblies are also used for electro- and photocatalysis. The group demonstrated electrocatalytic generation of hydrogen and oxygen from water, and their usefulness as light-activated antibacterial coatings.
- Can a new world of robust functional materials be constructed entirely from small molecules?
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The Boris Rybtchinski lab employs an understanding of crystallization mechanisms in order to fabricate soluble and tunable organic nanocrystals (ONCs) from simple aromatic molecules. These nanocrystals possess advantageous photonic and electronic functionality, such as nonlinear optical properties, efficient energy and charge transfer, etc. The group also develops new bulk materials based on ONCs. In the world of ONCs, simplicity and tunability of the molecular systems and the assembly processes enable the easy creation with a high degree of control of a virtually unlimited toolbox for new materials.
- Organic crystals
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Organic semiconducting crystals have many applications in the (opto)electronic industry. Examples include light-emitting diodes (LED), field-effect transistors (FET), and solar cells. Unlike inorganic semiconductors, where covalent or ionic bonds connect atoms, weak Van der Waals intermolecular forces hold the organic semiconductors. The connection of the molecules by weak forces has a profound effect on the crystal's electronic and structural dynamics. The Omer Yaffe group studies the relationship between the motion of the molecules and the motion of the electrons inside the crystals.
- Breaking the barriers in surface science
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The Baran Eren lab is extending the capacity of the currently existing techniques to be operable in the presence of 1 bar of gas and in liquids. This makes the group’s studies relevant for industrially important fields, such as heterogeneous catalysis, electrochemical hydrogen generation, and energy storage.
Research Groups
IES Fellows
Janine Benyus
Co-founder, Biomimicry Institute
Green chemistry is replacing our industrial chemistry with nature's recipe book. It's not easy, because life uses only a subset of the elements in the periodic table. And we use all of them, even the toxic ones.
Bill Gates
There is now significantly more money for basic research and development and more venture capital for clean startups in hard-to-decarbonise sectors than ever before. As a result, some important clean technologies—like sustainable airplane fuel, green steel and extra-powerful batteries—now exist and are ready to scale. If the world is really committed to climate innovation, however, then these breakthroughs must be only the beginning of the story, not the end.
United Nations
SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production is about ensuring sustainable consumption and production patterns, which is key to sustain the livelihoods of current and future generations.
United Nations
Unsustainable patterns of consumption and production are root causes of the triple planetary crises of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution. These crises, and related environmental degradation, threaten human well-being.