About us
Welcome to Gideon Segev's group website
We believe that wide scale implementation of solar energy conversion and storage, together with high efficiency water treatment is imperative for our society’s sustainable development. The Energy Devices Lab aims to create new paradigms for solar electricity and fuel generation, as well as for water desalination and decontamination. We hope to accomplish this by combining theory and experiment, developing new characterization methods and novel photovoltaic and photoelectrochemical cells that will support the continued global efforts towards sustainable development.
Research
Ratchet Based Ion Pumps
All Electric Ion Pumps for Water Desalination
Estimates show that about two thirds of the world’s population experience severe water scarcity at least one month every year. Reverse osmosis (RO) involves huge capital investments and are among the largest consumers of energy. Thus, the vast majority of population facing water scarcity live in regions that lack the financial and energetic means to construct and support RO facilities. Thus, there is an urgent need for a small-scale, low cost and reliable water desalination technology. In this project we are developing a new method for water desalination that is based on a ratchet mechanism
Collaborations:
Loss Mechanisms Tomography of Solar Cells
Functional tomography of Solar Cells
Although silicon photovoltaic (PV) cells are widely used for solar energy conversion, the lack of materials with the desired properties is still limiting our use of the solar resource. Since the efficiency of silicon PV cells is approaching their thermodynamic limit, new materials are required to further improve their performance. In this research we develop new characterization methods for solar cells and photoelectrochemical cells, and apply them to new candidate materials and devices.
HPEV cells
Hybrid Photo-Electrochemical and Photo-Voltaic Cells
Over the years, considerable work was dedicated to solar powered water decontamination and hydrogen generation. In most cases the demonstrated devices were made by stacking two or more light absorbers such that each absorbs a different part of the spectrum. However, in many cases multi junction photoelectrochemical (PEC) cells suffer from considerable losses due to imperfect electrical coupling between the layers. In this project we are developing novel devices that enable simultaneous electricity and hydrogen generation while each component of the cell is operating at its optimal conditions.
