Clivia M. Sotomayor Torres

Institut Català de Nanociència i Nanotecnologia

Engineering Sciences

Clivia obtained her PhD in Physics in 1984 (Manchester Univ., UK). She held tenured appointments at St. Andrews and Glasgow Universities and became a C4 professor at Wuppertal Univ. (Germany) in 1996. During 2004-8 she was a research professor at Univ. College Cork, Tyndall National Institute (Ireland). Since May 2007 she is with ICREA based at the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience & Nanotechnology where she heads a 17-strong team working on phonon engineering and nanofabrication. Clivia received awards from the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Nuffield Foundation and an Amelia Earhart Fellowship from ZONTA International (USA).  She is author of 508 scientific papers, of which 450 are indexed, has an h-index of 45 and over 8000 citations. She edited six books on low dimensional structures and nanofabrication. She was a guest professor at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden for five years until September 2018.


Research interests

Her group investigates new concepts for multi-state variables based on the engineered interactions of phonons with photons, electrons and magnons, in device-like structures. One particular interest is thermal transport at the nanoscale to address heat dissipation in nanoelectronics, the role of phonons in noise and dissipation in nano-scale systems. Another strand is Si-based opto-mechanics for phonon-based information processing. Our experimental research is anchored in novel nanofabrication methods including dimensional and defectivity metrology. The latter is essential to set up standards in manufacturing to ease the uptake of nanotechnology products. This year we launched research activities in topological matter aiming at dissipationless energy transport. In addition we successfully explored thermal conductivity of nanofluids.

Selected publications

– Maire J, Arregui G, Capuj N, Colombano MF, Griol A, Martinez A, Sotomayor Torres CM & Navarro-Urios D 2018, ‘Optical modulation of coherent phonon emission in optomechanical cavities‘, APL Photonics, vol. 3, no. 12, pp 126102.

– Navarro-Urrios D, Capuj NE, Maire J, Colombano M, Jaramillo-Fernandez J, Chavez-Angel E, Martin LL, Mercade L, Griol A, Martinez A, Sotomayor Torres CM & Ahopelto J 2018, ‘Nanocrystalline silicon optomechanical cavities‘, Optics Express, 26, 8, 9829 – 9839.

– Rodríguez-Laguna MR, Castro-Alvarez A, Sledzinska M, Maire J, Costanzo F, Ensing B, Pruneda M, Ordejon P, Sotomayor Torres CM, Gomez-Romero P & Chavez-Angel E 2018, ‘Mechanisms behind the enhancement of thermal properties of graphene nanofluid‘, Nanoscale, vol. 10, 15402-15409.

– Arregui G, Navarro-Urrios D, Kehagias N, Sotomayor Torres CM & Garcia PD 2018, ‘All-optical radio-frequency modulation of Anderson localized modes‘, Physical Review B, vol. 98, no. 18, pp 180202, 6 pages.

– Kehagias N, Francone A, Guttmann M, Winkler F, Fernandez A & Sotomayor Torres CM 2018, ‘Fabrication and replication of re-entrant structures by nanoimprint lithography methods‘, Journal of Vacuum Science & Technology B, vol 36, 06JF01.

– Francone A, Kehoe T, Obieta I, Saez-Martinez V, Bilbao L, Khokhar A, Gadegaard N, Delgado Simao C, Kehagias N & Sotomayor Torres CM 2018, ‘Integrated 3D Hydrogel Waveguide Out-Coupler by Step-and-Repeat Thermal Nanoimprint Lithography: A Promising Sensor Device for Water and pH‘, Sensors, vol. 18, nº 10, pp 3240.

– Benavente E, Navas D, Devis S, Segovia M, Sotomayor Torres CM & Gonzalez G 2018, ‘Composites of Laminar Nanostructured ZnO and VOx-Nanotubes Hybrid as Visible Light Active Photocatalysts‘, Catalysts, 8, 2, 93.


Selected research activities

Board member, Danish National Research Foundation.

EU H2020  FET Advisory Group Chair and ERC Panel member.

EU FET Open PHENOMEN project coordinator.

Member, Expert Committee for the Excellence Strategy of German Universities.