Oral: Electrical pumping of h-BN single-photon sources in van der Waals heterostructures

Single-photon emitters (SPEs) from atomic defects in solid-state systems play a key role in quantum information science because of their high scalability and controllability. All-electrical pumping of SPEs in solids facilitates the integration of emitters into electrically controlled devices and has been realized in several platforms including color centers in diamond, silicon carbide, and zinc oxide. In van der Waals materials, SPEs from hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) have shown unique properties such as deep level defects enabling room temperature operation and spin dependent emission properties, but it has been difficult to drive h-BN SPEs electrically so far. In this talk, we show that by using a thin h-BN layer in a van der Waals stacked structure, electrical pumping of h-BN SPEs can be realized. By flowing defect-induced tunneling currents across graphene/h-BN/NbSe2 heterostructure, we show persistent and repeatable generation of localized light from h-BN defects. We will discuss the emission spectrum, polarization, temporal stability, and second order correlation function measurement of the electrically pumped SPEs. Our work paves the way for electrically controlled single-photon devices in van der Waals platforms toward applications in quantum optoelectronics.