Correlated PL, Raman and IR nanospectroscopy for studying single-photon emitters in hBN
Final Report Abstract
Single photon emitters (SPEs) are a fundamental building block for the advancement of quantum technologies, including quantum information processing and quantum cryptography. These technologies require the availability of single photons on demand, and they should be as indistinguishable as possible. In addition, SPEs must meet specific criteria for their future applications, such as stability at room temperature, tunability in energy and polarization, and deterministic addressability. Promising SPEs can be found in layered van der Waals materials such as semiconducting transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) or insulating hexagonal boron nitride (hBN). Although these materials have been intensively studied in recent years due to their outstanding optical and mechanical properties, the characteristics of the SPEs hosted in the crystals are still relatively unknown. They were initially observed at edges and folds in TMDC monolayers at low temperatures. Subsequent research showed that they can be created deterministically through local deformation of the crystal lattice. An alternative method to generate SPEs in flat monolayers is He-ion irradiation. This leads to the conclusion that deformation in combination with atomic crystal defects are the main source of SPEs in TMDCs. A major disadvantage of these emitters in semiconducting host materials is that they only show a useful single photon operation at cryogenic temperatures. In contrast, SPEs in hBN can be investigated even at room temperature. Since it is known that strain has a significant impact on the SPEs found in TMDC layers, it is expected that it also affects hBN emitters. This makes SPEs in hBN promising building blocks in future quantum technologies. To reach the full potential of nanostructures, state-of-the-art spectroscopic techniques with high spatial resolution are essential. However, the vast majority of optical studies on SPEs have been performed using far-field techniques, which are limited in their spatial resolution to the micrometer range due to the diffraction limit. This problem can be overcome by near-field microscopy and spectroscopy, in particular tip-enhanced near-field photoluminescence (TEPL), Raman spectroscopy (TERS) and IR-nanoimaging (s-SNOM) and -spectroscopy (nano-FTIR). In this project, I am investigating SPEs in hBN using near-field techniques to study their optical properties at the nanometer scale.
Publications
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Percolating Superconductivity in Air‐Stable Organic‐Ion Intercalated MoS2. Advanced Functional Materials, 32(52).
Pereira, Jose M.; Tezze, Daniel; Niehues, Iris; Asensio, Yaiza; Yang, Haozhe; Mester, Lars; Chen, Shu; Casanova, Felix; Bittner, Alexander M.; Ormaza, Maider; Schiller, Frederik; Martín‐García, Beatriz; Hillenbrand, Rainer; Hueso, Luis E. & Gobbi, Marco
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Identification of weak molecular absorption in single-wavelength s-SNOM images. Optics Express, 31(4), 7012.
Niehues, Iris; Mester, Lars; Vicentini, Edoardo; Wigger, Daniel; Schnell, Martin & Hillenbrand, Rainer
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Pseudoheterodyne interferometry for multicolor near-field imaging. Optics Express, 31(14), 22308.
Vicentini, Edoardo; Nuansing, Wiwat; Niehues, Iris; Amenabar, Iban; Bittner, Alexander M.; Hillenbrand, Rainer & Schnell, Martin
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Real-space observation of ultraconfined in-plane anisotropic acoustic terahertz plasmon polaritons. Nature Materials, 22(7), 860-866.
Chen, S.; Leng, P. L.; Konečná, A.; Modin, E.; Gutierrez-Amigo, M.; Vicentini, E.; Martín-García, B.; Barra-Burillo, M.; Niehues, I.; Maciel, Escudero C.; Xie, X. Y.; Hueso, L. E.; Artacho, E.; Aizpurua, J.; Errea, I.; Vergniory, M. G.; Chuvilin, A.; Xiu, F. X. & Hillenbrand, R.
