Professor Nadav Amdursky

Welcome to the research group of Nadav Amdursky for the study of charge transport across bioderived materials.

Biological charge transfer processes, such as the ones in the respiratory system, are the basis for our life, whereas proteins are Nature’s main choice for the translocation of charges. As such, we, as scientists, have the obligation to understand the fundamentals of natural charge transport. Understanding these processes also allows designing innovative protein-based conductive bioinspired materials based on natural concepts. In our research group, we explore various types of charge transfer properties across either natural protein systems or artificial ones, from the nm-scale all the way to macroscopic biopolymers, while distinguishing between electron and proton transfer.

Our approach to making novel conductive biopolymers is based on a sustainable nature of using natural byproducts for the formation of the biopolymer while adopting green chemistry principles.

Our group is equipped with two main experimental systems to study the charge transfer properties. The first is an environmental electrical system, where we can measure charge transfer upon applying bias in various configurations, from molecular junctions to macroscopic biopolymers and from electrical impedance measurements to field-effect transistors. The second system is a state-of-the-art ultrafast laser system that is used to follow light-induced charge transfer involving biological materials, and we are capable of observing individual charge transfer steps in the fs-ns time scales.

Our group is highly multidisciplinary, combining chemistry with materials, physics, biology, and electrical engineering. Our main two avenues involve fundamental basic research and application-oriented research. In our basic exploration, we target understanding how charges travel across various biological circuits and how we can influence dynamic processes with light-induced charge transfer. While we explore energy transfer, electron transfer, and proton transfer, our main speciality is the latter, where we introduced novel methodologies to follow proton transfer in bioinspired systems. For the applicative type of research, we target the development of innovative biopolymers while focusing both on the polymerization process itself for making new biodegradable bioplastics and also for making conductive biopolymers for several application routes, from sustainable energy and organic electronics to biomedical applications.