Blue-light-emitting color centers in high-quality hexagonal boron nitride

Shevitski, Brian; Gilbert, S. Matt; Chen, Christopher T.; Kastl, Christoph; Barnard, Edward S.; Wong, Ed; Ogletree, D. Frank; Watanabe, Kenji; Taniguchi, Takashi; Zettl, Alex; Aloni, Shaul

doi:10.1103/physrevb.100.155419

Title: Blue-light-emitting color centers in high-quality hexagonal boron nitride

Journal Article · Thu Oct 17 00:00:00 EDT 2019 · Physical Review. B

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevb.100.155419· OSTI ID:1574342

^[1]; Gilbert, S. Matt ^[2]; Chen, Christopher T. ^[3]; Kastl, Christoph ^[4]; Barnard, Edward S. ^[3]; Wong, Ed ^[3]; Ogletree, D. Frank ^[3]; Watanabe, Kenji ^[5]; Taniguchi, Takashi ^[5]; Zettl, Alex ^[2]; Aloni, Shaul ^[3]

Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States). Kavli Energy NanoScience Inst.; Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States). Molecular Foundry
Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States). Kavli Energy NanoScience Inst.; Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States). Molecular Foundry
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States). Molecular Foundry; Technical Univ. of Munich (Germany). Walter-Schottky-Inst.
National Inst. for Materials Science (NIMS), Tsukuba (Japan). Advanced Materials Lab.

Light emitters in wide-band-gap semiconductors are of great fundamental interest and have potential as optically addressable qubits. Here we describe a unique color center in high-quality hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) with a sharp emission line at 435 nm. The emitters are activated and deactivated by electron beam irradiation and have spectral and temporal characteristics consistent with atomic color centers weakly coupled to lattice vibrations. The emitters are conspicuously absent from commercially available h-BN and are present in only ultrahigh-quality h-BN grown using a high-pressure, high-temperature Ba-B-N flux/solvent, suggesting that these emitters originate from impurities or related defects specific to this unique synthetic route. Lastly, our results imply that the light emission is activated and deactivated by electron beam manipulation of the charge state of an impurity-defect complex.

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Research Organization:: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES) (SC-22). Materials Sciences & Engineering Division; National Science Foundation (NSF)

Grant/Contract Number:: AC02-05CH11231; DMR-1807233; 1542741

OSTI ID:: 1574342

Journal Information:: Physical Review. B, Vol. 100, Issue 15; ISSN 2469-9950

Publisher:: American Physical Society (APS)Copyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Cited by: 17 works

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Stimulated Emission Depletion Microscopy with Color Centers in Hexagonal Boron Nitride Khatri, Prince; Edward Malein, Ralph Nicholas; Ramsay, Andrew J. ACS Photonics, Vol. 8, Issue 7 https://doi.org/10.1021/acsphotonics.1c00423	journal	June 2021
Optical control of the charge state of color centers in hexagonal boron nitride Khatri, Prince; Ramsay, Andrew J.; Malein, Ralph N. E. arXiv https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2002.08177	text	January 2020

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