The scientist who makes smart devices from mere molecules

ISRAEL21c visits Prof. Muhammad Bashouti at Ben-Gurion University to learn how he is transforming microscopic matter into sensors and solar cells.

ISRAEL21c

Science-Technology | Comments | August 29, 2019

The scientist who makes smart devices from mere molecules — *Prof. Muhammad Bashouti outside the Swiss Institute for Dryland Environmental and Energy Research at Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research, Ben-Gurion University. Photo by Abigail K. Leichman*

If you isolate a single molecule of a conductive metal, can it conduct energy all by itself? That question nagged Muhammad Bashouti in high school and stumped his science teacher. Actually, an Israeli researcher at the Weizmann Institute of Science had found the answer (a resounding “yes”) several years before Bashouti was born in 1977. But it wasn’t yet public knowledge.

So, this inquisitive son of a Muslim Galilee farmer made the correct assumption that every molecule does contain some of the properties of the whole. And he set out to determine how individual molecules of conductors, semiconductors and insulators could help humanity. To learn every facet of the topic, Bashouti earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a doctorate in physical chemistry at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa. He did postdocs in chemical engineering at the Technion and in physics at Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light in Germany. Along the way, he discovered something extraordinary: He could harness the properties of molecules to turn them into tiny smart devices that do tasks faster, better, at lower cost, using less energy and materials than do existing digital devices powered by transistors and diodes. His most advanced molecule-based inventions include: -- More...

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ISRAEL21c was founded in 2001, in the wake of the Second Intifada, to broaden public understanding of Israel beyond typical portrayals in the mainstream media.

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