Chunhui Du
Georgia Institute of Technology, GA·Physics·Early-career
Information in electronics can be carried by the magnetic orientation of atoms, not just by electric charge. Several unusual magnetic materials could make memory and logic denser, faster and more stable, but their behavior unfolds over just a few nanometers, which most instruments cannot resolve.
- Fields
Physics
Materials Science
- Topics
quantum sensing
nitrogen-vacancy center
NV center
- Grants
- 3 known grants, through Jan 2029
What they work on
- Determine how spin spreads through antiferromagnetic insulators and how their alternating Néel order switches, by imaging local magnetic fields with nitrogen-vacancy defects in diamond.
- Couple diamond NV centers to magnons, the spin waves of antiferromagnets, to build hybrid devices aimed at quantum information applications.
- Image magnetization switching without an applied field, plus skyrmions (whirl-shaped spin textures), in stacked devices made from Fe3GaTe2, a van der Waals magnet that works at room temperature.
- Combine NV centers with functional van der Waals magnets to address practical limitations NV sensors face in quantum information settings.
- Map spin density waves and probe valley transport in the Weyl semimetal NdAlSi using scanning quantum microscopy, to explain how Weyl electrons generate unusual magnetism.
- Excite, control and detect the chiral anomaly, an electromagnetic effect unique to Weyl materials, locally in CeAlSi via magnetic coupling between the diamond sensor and the sample.
More about the research
Three projects in this lab build and apply a sensor fine enough to see it: nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers, single atomic defects in diamond whose spin shifts in response to tiny magnetic fields and can be read out optically. Mounted on a scanning tip, these defects act as a magnetic microscope.
Why it matters
Denser, faster and more stable information storage depends on understanding candidate magnetic materials at the nanometer scale. Results could guide the design of spintronic memory and logic built from antiferromagnets, atom-thin magnets, or topological metals. The scanning quantum microscope itself is transferable, giving other groups a way to measure local magnetism in many low-dimensional quantum materials.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Nanoscale Quantum Sensing of Magnetic and Noncentrosymmetric Weyl Semimetals
NSF · Feb 2026 – Jan 2029
Quantum Sensing of Room-temperature van der Waals Magnets for Next-Generation Quantum Spintronic Device Applications
NSF · May 2025 – Apr 2028
CAREER: Probing Antiferromagnetic Spintronics with Nitrogen-Vacancy Centers in Diamond
NSF · Sep 2023 – Mar 2027
Closest labs
Christian Binek
University of Nebraska-Lincoln, NE·Physics
Engineer interfaces in oxide and van der Waals layered stacks to control magnetic and electric order, defects and spin textures, aiming at memristive devices and neuromorphic, brain-inspired computing.
Chong Zu
Washington University in St Louis, MO·Physics
Explore new non-equilibrium phenomena that arise when the strict time-periodic (Floquet) driving of a quantum spin system is relaxed, using nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center ensembles in diamond.
Catalin Martin
Ramapo College of New Jersey, NJ·Physics
Probe for Weyl cones, the cone-shaped bands of massless electrons, in REAlX semimetals such as PrAlGe1-xSix, and map their extent, shape and position using low-temperature infrared spectroscopy from terahertz to ultraviolet.
The school
Georgia Institute of Technology: 50 labs on PI Pages, $1.5B a year on research, 572 research doctorates a year.
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