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

Brian Shevitski, S. Matt Gilbert, Christopher T. Chen, Christoph Kastl, Edward S. Barnard, Ed Wong, D. Frank Ogletree, Kenji Watanabe, Takashi Taniguchi, Alex Zettl, and Shaul Aloni
Phys. Rev. B 100, 155419 – Published 17 October 2019
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Abstract

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. 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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  • Received 3 May 2019

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.100.155419

©2019 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Quantum Information, Science & TechnologyCondensed Matter, Materials & Applied Physics

Authors & Affiliations

Brian Shevitski1,2,3,4, S. Matt Gilbert1,2,3, Christopher T. Chen4, Christoph Kastl4,5, Edward S. Barnard4, Ed Wong4, D. Frank Ogletree4, Kenji Watanabe6, Takashi Taniguchi6, Alex Zettl1,2,3,*, and Shaul Aloni4,†

  • 1Department of Physics, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, California 94720, USA
  • 2Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA
  • 3Kavli Energy NanoScience Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94729, USA
  • 4The Molecular Foundry, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA
  • 5Walter-Schottky-Institute and Physik Department, Technical University of Munich, 85748 Garching, Germany
  • 6Advanced Materials Laboratory, National Institute for Materials Science, 1-1 Namiki, Tsukuba 305-0044, Japan

  • *azettl@berkeley.edu
  • saloni@lbl.gov

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Issue

Vol. 100, Iss. 15 — 15 October 2019

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