Phys.org October 8, 2020
An international team of researchers (USA – Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Montana State University, Spain) has demonstrated electrically stimulated photon emission from individual atomic defects in monolayer WS2 and directly correlated the emission with the local atomic and electronic structure. Radiative transitions are locally excited by sequential inelastic electron tunneling from a metallic tip into selected discrete defect states in the WS2 bandgap. Coupling to the optical far field is mediated by tip plasmons, which transduce the excess energy into a single photon. The applied tip-sample voltage determines the transition energy. Inelastic charge carrier injection into localized defect states of two-dimensional materials provides a powerful platform for electrically driven, broadly tunable, atomic-scale single-photon sources. The researchers plan to work on employing new materials to use as photon sources in quantum networks and quantum simulations…read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Tunneling electron-induced photon emission. Credit: Science Advances 16 Sep 2020, Vol. 6, no. 38, eabb5988