CPE Keynote Seminar with Prof Ron Naaman, Department of Chemical and Biological Physics, Weizmann Institute, Israel
Chiral Material and the Electrons’ Spin- A Miraculous Match
Abstract
Spin based properties, applications, and devices are commonly related to magnetic effects and to magnetic materials. However, we found that chiral molecules, crystals, and films act as spin filters for photoelectrons transmission, in electron transfer, and in electron transport.
The new effect, termed Chiral Induced Spin Selectivity (CISS),(1) was found, among others, in bio-molecules and in bio-systems as well as in chiral oxides and in chiral perovskites. It has interesting implications for the production of new types of spintronics devices, (2) in controlling magnetization,(3) and on electron transfer and conduction. It also enables the introduction of new type of catalysts, especially for oxygen related processes. We also found that charge polarization in chiral molecules is accompanied by spin polarization. This finding shed new light on spin dependent interaction between chiral molecules and between them and magnetic surfaces.(4)
Further reading
1. R. Naaman, Y. Paltiel, D,H, Waldeck, J. Phys. Chem. Lett., 11 (2020) 3660.
2. K. Michaeli, V. Varade, R. Naaman, D. A Waldeck, J. of Physics: Condensed Matter. 29
(2017) 103002.
3. E. Z. B. Smolinsky et al. J. Phys. Chem. Lett. 10 (2019) 1139.
4. K. Banerjee-Ghosh, et al., Science 360 (2018) 1331.
Short Bio
Ron Naaman earned his BSc in 1973 from Ben-Gurion University and his PhD in 1978 from the Weizmann Institute of Science. He worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University in California, and spent a year in the Department of Chemistry at Harvard University. In 1981, he joined the Weizmann Institute and in 1991 he became a Full Professor. He was the recipient of the Kolthof Award from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technolog (2014), was honored by a special issue of the Journal of Physical Chemistry (2013). He received the Erasmus Mundus research scholarship at the Technical University in Dresden. and was the recipient of the Israel Vacuum Society Research Excellence Prize in 2011. In 2007, he was the Division of Colloid and Surface Chemistry Lecturer of the Chemical Society of Japan. In 2018 he got the Israel Chemical Society prize for excellent research and in 2020 he got the Humboldt-Meitner Prize. Ron is a fellow of the American Physical Society, Fellow of the Royal Chemical Society, and a member of Academia Europaea.