TY - JOUR
T1 - Room-temperature single photon emitters in cubic boron nitride nanocrystals
AU - López-Morales, Gabriel I.
AU - Almanakly, Aziza
AU - Satapathy, Sitakanta
AU - Proscia, Nicholas V.
AU - Jayakumar, Harishankar
AU - Khabashesku, Valery N.
AU - Ajayan, Pulickel M.
AU - Meriles, Carlos A.
AU - Menon, Vinod M.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Optical Society of America.
PY - 2020/4/1
Y1 - 2020/4/1
N2 - Color centers in wide bandgap semiconductors are attracting broad attention for use as platforms for quantum technologies relying on room-temperature single-photon emission (SPE), and for nanoscale metrology applications building on the centers' response to electric and magnetic fields. Here, we demonstrate room-temperature SPE from defects in cubic boron nitride (cBN) nanocrystals, which we unambiguously assign to the cubic phase using spectrally resolved Raman imaging. These isolated spots show photoluminescence (PL) spectra with zero-phonon lines (ZPLs) within the visible region (496-700 nm) when subject to sub-bandgap laser excitation. Second-order autocorrelation of the emitted photons reveals antibunching with g2(0) 0.2,and a decay constant of 2.75 ns that is further confirmed through fluorescence lifetime measurements. The results presented herein prove the existence of optically addressable isolated quantum emitters originating from defects in cBN, making this material an interesting platform for opto-electronic devices and quantum applications.
AB - Color centers in wide bandgap semiconductors are attracting broad attention for use as platforms for quantum technologies relying on room-temperature single-photon emission (SPE), and for nanoscale metrology applications building on the centers' response to electric and magnetic fields. Here, we demonstrate room-temperature SPE from defects in cubic boron nitride (cBN) nanocrystals, which we unambiguously assign to the cubic phase using spectrally resolved Raman imaging. These isolated spots show photoluminescence (PL) spectra with zero-phonon lines (ZPLs) within the visible region (496-700 nm) when subject to sub-bandgap laser excitation. Second-order autocorrelation of the emitted photons reveals antibunching with g2(0) 0.2,and a decay constant of 2.75 ns that is further confirmed through fluorescence lifetime measurements. The results presented herein prove the existence of optically addressable isolated quantum emitters originating from defects in cBN, making this material an interesting platform for opto-electronic devices and quantum applications.
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U2 - 10.1364/OME.386791
DO - 10.1364/OME.386791
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85082885506
SN - 2159-3930
VL - 10
SP - 843
EP - 849
JO - Optical Materials Express
JF - Optical Materials Express
IS - 4
M1 - 6791
ER -