Magnetic-field-dependent quantum emission in hexagonal boron nitride at room temperature.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 30644413.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-018-08185-8 and PMC identifier 6333818.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Optically addressable spins associated with defects in wide-bandgap semiconductors are versatile platforms for quantum information processing and nanoscale sensing, where spin-dependent inter-system crossing transitions facilitate optical spin initialization and readout. Recently, the van der Waals material hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) has emerged as a robust host for quantum emitters, promising efficient photon extraction and atom-scale engineering, but observations of spin-related effects have remained thus far elusive. Here, we report room-temperature observations of strongly anisotropic photoluminescence patterns as a function of applied magnetic field for select quantum emitters in h-BN. Field-dependent variations in the steady-state photoluminescence and photon emission statistics are consistent with an electronic model featuring a spin-dependent inter-system crossing between triplet and singlet manifolds, indicating that optically-addressable spin defects are present in h-BN.