Distinguished Professor
Office: 237 Physics Building
Phone: +1 (530) 752-4689
Fax: +1 (530) 752-4717
Email: xdzhu@ucdavis.edu
Personal Professional Website:
https://zhu.physics.ucdavis.edu
Research Interests:
Professor Zhu joined the Physics Department in 1989. His research activities are focused on development and application of optics-based techniques to investigation of structures and processes on the surface and in the interior of solids such as magnetism, mass transport, material growth/removal, and biomolecular interactions. Recent interests are (1) time-reversal symmetry breaking effects in unconventional materials, - studies of magneto-optic effects in unconventional materials such as topological solids, chiral charge-density-wave compounds, chiral/time-reversal-symmetry-breaking superconductors, ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic crystals exhibiting novel anomalous Hall effects using Sagnac interferometry-based optical microscopes; (2) simultaneous detection of over 10,000 biomolecular binding reactions on solid support, - high-throughput characterization of kinetics and functionality of biological molecules using oblique-incidence reflectivity difference microscopes and normal-incidence interference microscopes.
Time-reversal symmetry breaking effects in unconventional materials
Magnetism and time-reversal symmetry breaking in general are one of fundamental properties of materials. Interests in new magnetic phases and spin transport in materials of low dimensionality and of non-trivial topology drive and expand the field of magnetism. Since magnetism in a material reveals itself through magneto-optic effects when the material interacts with light. Professor Zhu’s group develops a range of magneto-optic probes and investigates these effects. The current work is focused on zero-area Sagnac interferometric microscopy for studying anomalous Hall effects (AHE) and magneto-electric effects (ME) at optical frequencies in ferromagnets (FM), antiferromagnets (AFM), and unconventional superconductors.
Simultaneous detection of over 10,000 biomolecular binding reactions on solid support
Based on measurements of oblique-incidence reflectivity difference (OI-RD), Professor Zhu’s group developed a platform that simultaneously detects over 10,000 distinct biomolecular binding reactions on a solid surface in real time. It enables highly parallel, comparative studies of the interaction of a DNA fragment or a protein molecule or a viral particle or a bacterium with a vast number of molecular targets originating from compound libraries of National Institutes of Health (~ 500,000 to 1,000,000 compounds), National Cancer Institute (~ 100,000 compounds), and commercial vendors (~ 1,000,000 or more compounds). The platform promises to significantly advance genomic and proteomic research and discovery of new drugs. More recently, Professor Zhu’s group is developing a normal-incidence interference scanning microscope for detecting effects and functionality changes in protein or DNA molecules when they are modified at or by single bases.
Research Areas
Career History
- Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, 1989
- Assistant Professor, University of California, Davis, 1989-1993
- Associate Professor, University of California, Davis, 1993-1998
- Professor, University of California, Davis, 1998-Present
Honors
- Fudan Fellow, Fudan University, 2018
- Fellow, Optica (fomerly known as Optical Society of America), 2011
- Fellow, American Physical Society, 2007