Contact
e-mail: InonShar (at) TAU (dot ) ac (dot) IL (click for QR code)
Web site: QR code
Address: School of Chemistry, Raymond and Beverly Sackler Faculty of Exact Sciences,
Tel Aviv University, 60 Levanon Street, Ramat Aviv 69978, Israel
Office: Ornstein 411A
Phone: +972-3-640-7634
Introduction
My name is Inon Sharony, and I am a doctoral student in Professor Avraham Nitzan's group at TAU.
I graduated my B.Sc. studies in 2007, majoring in Chemistry with Physics as a minor subject.
My particular area of interest within our group is heat conduction through molecular wires.
CV:
Molecular Electronics
Click here for an animation of a Single Molecule of Thioethane Adsorbed on a Single Atom of Gold (tethered to its place) relaxing to zero Kelvin from room temperature
This is a schematic of a molecular junction of the type our group deals with. We study transport through the molecular bridge between two contacts. The transport may be of an electrical current or of heat, for example. In the instance shown above, the molecular junction operates as an electronic switch (M. Reed, et al., Science 1999).
Cartoon of a simulated Metal-Molecule-Metal (MMM) junction of the simplest kind -- in this case a Hydrogen molecule.
Professor J. C. Cuevas at the Cond. Mat. Theo. Phys. department of the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid has uploaded a presentation he gave in which I found this slide depicting the functional character of some molecular electronics. (The original isn't mine. Please excuse the typographical error.)
Motivation
Rolf Landauer, "Irreversibility and Heat Generation in the Computing Process," IBM Journal of Research & Developement, vol. 5, pp. 183-191, 1961.
Gordon Moore, "Cramming more components onto integrated circuits," Electronics, Volume 38, Number 8, April 19, 1965.
Victor V. Zhirnov, Ralph K. Cavin, III, James A. Hutchby, and George I. Bourianoff, "Limits to Binary Logic Switch Scaling -- A Gedanken Model," Proceedings of the IEEE, Vol. 91, No. 11, November 2003.
Arieh Aviram & Mark A. Ratner, "Molecular Rectifiers," Chemical Physics Letters, vol. 29, no. 2, pp. 277-283, November 15, 1974.
Experiments
- "All science is either physics or stamp collecting." -- Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson, quoted in "Rutherford at Manchester" (1962) by J. B. Birks.
- "In mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them." -- John von Neumann, quoted in "The Dancing Wu Li Masters" (1984) by Gary Zukav.
Scanning electron micrograph of an electromigration-fabricated gold junction, with a nanometre-scale gap, used by Stephanie Getty and co-workers at the University of Maryland, USA, to study transport through single molecules.
"Molecular electronics: Back under control", Mark A. Reed, Nature Materials 3, 286 - 287 (2004).
A neat way of creating a nano- junction by bridging the gap between the electrodes, and then pulling them apart, thereby creating the nanoscale bridge.
STM image at 63 K of trans-BCTBPP wires formed on the Au(111) surface (imaged area 70 x 70 nm).
"Selective assembly on a surface of supramolecular aggregates with controlled size and shape", Yokoyama et. al., Nature 413, 619-621 (2001).
Teaching
In spring semesters I am the lead lab instructor for the Computational Chemistry Laboratory, under Associate Professor Ephraim Eliav.
My responsibilities include delivering frontal lectures to the entire class, leading interactive teaching sessions, instructing lab groups (as well as grading their preparatory exercises and final reports), personally evaluating students within my lab group, developing lab exercises, maintaining the lab manual, and composing and grading quiz questions.
Since I began instructing in the lab, we have had multiple requests by research group heads and their students from other universities to have students enroll in our course, as they have found it uniquely adapted to their research needs.
Additionally, student demand had outrun lab accommodations three years in a row.
During the time in which I have been an instructor in the Computational Chemistry Lab, I've learned a great deal, both with regard to the management and leadership of an instruction team, and with regard to the course material itself.
I've tried to put an emphasis on the specific research interests of the students, and on how the Computational Chemistry Lab can give them the necessary tools for these applications.
In fall semesters I am the senior recitation master for the course Thermodynamics, under Professor Haim Diamant.
As such, my responsibilities include delivering weekly two-hour frontal lectures, personally tutoring students, synchronizing the recitations with the Professor's lectures, maintaining the existing TA guide and producing new modules, and assisting the Professor with the preparation and administration of the final exam.
The relatively long time during which I've held this position has afforded me the opportunity to acquire and hone my teaching skills, as well as improving my fundamental understanding of the course material and related topics.
Other
Manifestations of the different parts of the stress tensor in earthquakes.
Physicists are very clever people. When they want to find out what something is made of, they take two of the thing and crash them together, much as a toddler would two toy trucks. When pieces fly off, they look at what originally consisted the particles they collided. The Mass-Energy equivalence shows up in particle accelerators much as this drawing depicts -- the kinetic energy that the original particles were endowed allows for particles heavier than the originals to be created, while the products carry less momentum.
A wonderful Hetzsprung-Russell diagram which depicts the relation between mass, luminosity, and temperature of different known populations of stars.
A statue erected in honor of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in Edinburgh, featuring the quintessential man of pure reason.
- "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw, "Maxims for Revolutionists", #124, (1903).
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