Stephan Roche

Institut Català de Nanociència i Nanotecnologia

Engineering Sciences

Stephan Roche is ICREA Prof. working at the Catalan Institute of Nanosciences and Nanotechnology-ICN2 and the Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology. He leads the "Theoretical and Computational Nanoscience" group which focuses on quantum transport in Dirac materials (graphene and topological insulators). He pioneered the development of linear scaling computational approaches for wavepacket dynamics, Kubo conductivities, and Landauer-Büttiker conductance in disordered materials.  He studied Theoretical Physics at ENS and UJF (France), received a PhD in Physics in 1996 (CNRS), and worked in Japan, Spain and Germany. He was appointed Prof. assistant at UJF (2000) and CEA Researcher (2004), and received the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel prize from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (Germany). He is the PI of ICN2 in the GRAPHENE FLAGSHIP, and deputy leader of the Graphene Spintronics WP.


Research interests

At ICN2, S. Roche and his group theoretically explore exotic quantum transport in Dirac Matter including graphene and topological insulators. Main current  interests include (i) the study of quantum interferences and decoherence mechanisms in presence of electron-phonon coupling and spin-orbit interaction, (ii) spin dynamics and spin-torques phenomena in van der Waals heterostructures, (iii) spin Hall and quantum spin Hall effects, valley Hall effects in graphene and (iv) thermoelectricity in two-dimensional materials (v)  quantum devices simulation.

Selected publications

– Cummings AW, Garcia JH, Fabian F & Roche S 2017, ‘Giant Spin Lifetime Anisotropy in Graphene Induced by Proximity Effects’, Phys. Rev. Lett., 119, 206601.

– Ribeiro M, Power SR, Roche S, Hueso L & Casanova F 2017, ‘Scale-invariant large nonlocality in polycrystalline graphene‘, Nature Communications, 8, 2198.

– Barrios-Vargas JE, Mortazavi B, Cummings A, Martinez-Gordillo R, Pruneda M, Colombo L, Rabczuk T & Roche S 2017, ‘Electrical and thermal transport in coplanar polycrystalline graphene-hBN heterostructures’, Nano Letters​, 17 (3), pp 1660–1664.

– Garcia JH, Cummings AW & Roche S 2017, ‘Spin Hall Effect and Weak Antilocalization in Graphene/Transition Metal Dichalcogenide Heterostructures’, Nano Letters, 17 (8), pp 5078–5083.

– Isacsson A, Cummings AW, Colombo L, Colombo L, Kinaret JM & Roche S 2017, ‘Scaling properties of polycrystalline graphene: a review‘, 2D Materials, 4, 012002.

– Settnes M, Garcia JH & Roche S 2017, ‘Valley-polarized quantum transport generated by gauge fields in graphene‘, 2D Materials, 4, 3, 031006.

– Hallal A, Ibrahim F, Yang H,  Roche S & Chshiev M 2017, ‘Tailoring magnetic insulator proximity effects in graphene : First-principles calculations‘, 2D Materials, 4, 025074.


Selected research activities

Invited talks:

– SOLVAY conference “From physics of graphene to graphene for physics” (Belgium- 09/2017)
– Recent Progress in Graphene Research 2017 (Singapore-09/2017)
– GRAPHCHINA 2017 (China, 09/07)
– ECME2017 (Germany, 08/2017)