Artificial atomic systems in solids are widely considered the leading physical system for a variety of quantum technologies, including quantum communications, computing and metrology To date, however, room-temperature quantum emitters have only been observed in wide-bandgap semiconductors such as diamond and silicon carbide, nanocrystal quantum dots, and most recently in carbon nanotubes. Single-photon emission from two-dimensional materials has been reported, but only at cryogenic temperatures. Here, we demonstrate room-temperature, polarized and ultrabright single-photon emission from a colour centre in two-dimensional hexagonal boron nitride. Density functional theory calculations indicate that vacancy-related defects are a probable source of the emission. Our results demonstrate the unprecedented potential of van der Waals crystals for large-scale nanophotonics and quantum information processing.

Nature Nanotechnology (2015) doi:10.1038/nnano.2015.242
Received 28 April 2015 Accepted 14 September 2015 Published online 26 October 2015

http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nnano.2015.242.html