Speaker
Description
Atomically thin crystalline layers have emerged as a distinctive platform for solid-state quantum emitters, offering a combination of exotic optical and electronic properties. This talk will give an overview on the landscape of color centers in hexagonal boron
nitride (hBN) and transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) and their nanocomposites. In hBN, the negatively charged boron vacancy (V-B
−1) is firmly established as an optically addressable spin triplet, while the bright, room-temperature single-photon emitters spanning the visible spectrum remain the major research focus, with carbon-related substitutional and vacancy complexes the leading candidate. But in TMDCs,quantum light arises from excitons funnelled into strain-induced potential minima, with chalcogen vacancies and adatom complexes providing complementary, more localized states. Generation of controlled defects, where deterministic creation via nanoindentation and patterned strain is done by various processes such as focused ion and electron irradiation, femtosecond laser writing, and post-growth annealing has led to creation of visible light emitters. The photonic integration, covering the coupling of emitters to microcavities, plasmonic structures, and dielectric waveguides for directional collection, can exhibit ability to place a 2D host directly onto a pre-fabricated photonic circuit. Swift heavy ion irradiation enables controlled defect
engineering and reduction chemistry in GO–hBN hybrids, offering a pathway toward tailored quantum/defect emission and tunable optoelectronic devices. The challenges that these materials face such as unambiguous defect generation, spectral stability, and scalable spin-photon interfaces etc. before being deployable into quantum technologies
will be outlined.
References
1. Vidyotma Yadav and Tanuja Mohanty, Nanotechnology 34, 495204 (2023).
2. PK Kasana, A Pandey, T Mohanty, Applied Physics A 132 (1), 7 (2026)