Sergio O. Valenzuela

Institut Català de Nanociència i Nanotecnologia

Engineering Sciences

Sergio O. Valenzuela is an ICREA Prof. at the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2), The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology. He leads the Physics and Engineering of Nanodevices group, which focuses on quantum transport, spintronics, and thermoelectricity in materials such as graphene and topological insulators. He has pioneered the use of nonlocal devices to study the spin Hall effect, thermopiles to isolate the magnon drag in ferromagnetic materials, and implemented novel qubit control and spectroscopy methods. Prof. Valenzuela received a PhD in Physics at the University of Buenos Aires, and held research positions at Harvard University and MIT. He is recipient of the Giambiagi prize, the IUPAP Young Scientist Prize and a ERC Consolidator Grant. He is also Principal Investigator of the Graphene Flagship and Grantor of the ICN2 “Severo Ochoa” Centre of Excellence Project.


Research interests

In recent years, electronic devices have been scaled down to nanoscale sizes where quantum effects begin to interfere with their functioning. Materials and devices in such scales often present unexpected and counterintuitive physical properties. Prof. Valenzuela’s Group focus is the development of novel devices, which are designed to gain insight of specific physical properties of the system components, relevant both for fundamental reasons and applications at the nanoscale. The current research interests of the group span Spintronics, Spin Caloritronics, and quantum transport in particular in graphene and topological insulators. For more information see: http://nanodevices.icn2.cat.

Selected publications

– Sierra JF, Neumann i, Cuppens J, Raes B, Costache MV & Valenzuela SO 2018, ‘Thermoelectric spin voltage in graphene‘, Nature Nanotechnol., 13, 107–111.

– Benítez LA, Sierra JF, Savero Torres W, Arrighi A, Bonell F, Costache MV & Valenzuela SO 2018, ‘Strongly anisotropic spin relaxation in graphene–transition metal dichalcogenide heterostructures at room temperature‘, Nature Physics, 14, 303–308.

– Moreno C, Vilas-Varela M, Kretz B, García-Lekue A, Costache MV, Paradinas M, Panighel M, Ceballos G, Valenzuela SO, Peña D & Mugarza A 2018, ‘Bottom-up synthesis of multifunctional nanoporous graphene‘, Science, 360, pp 199-203.

Valenzuela SO & Roche S 2018, ‘A barrier to spin filter´, Nature Electronics, 1, pp 328-329.

– Gebeyehu ZM, Arrighi A, Costache MV, Sotomayor-Torres CM, Esplandiu MJ, Valenzuela SO 2018, ‘Impact of the in situ rise in hydrogen partial pressure on graphene shape evolution during CVD growth of graphene’, RSC Advances, 8, 15, 8234 – 8239.


Selected research activities

Selected Invited/Plenary Talks

– 3rd EU-Japan Flagship Workshop on Graphene and Related 2D Materials, Sendai, Japan. November 19-21, 2018.
– 103ª Reunión de la Asociación de Física Argentina, Plenary, Buenos Aires. September 17-21, 2018.
– Quantum Designer Physics, San Sebastian. July 15-19, 2018.
– XIV International Conference on Nanostructured Materials, Keynote, NANO2018, Hong Kong. June 24-29, 2018.
– SFB Kolloquium, Regensburg University, Germany. January 30, 2018.

Other Activities

– Lecturer, ESONN’18 European School on Nanoscience & Nanotechnologies (Spintronics), Grenoble, France.
– Scientific Advisory Committee Member of the European School on Magnetism (ESM).
– Co-Editor Focus Issue on Tailoring Spin-Dependent Transport in 2D Materials (2D Materials Journal; http://2dmaterials.org).
– Organizing Committee Member of The Joint European Magnetic Symposia, JEMS (2018).