Tuning colour centres at a twisted hexagonal boron nitride interface

Cong Su; Fang Zhang; Salman Kahn; Brian Shevitski; Jingwei Jiang; Chunhui Dai; Alex Ungar; Ji-Hoon Park; Kenji Watanabe; Takashi Taniguchi; Jing Kong; Zikang Tang; Wenqing Zhang; Feng Wang; Michael Crommie; Steven G Louie; Shaul Aloni; Alex Zettl

doi:10.1038/s41563-022-01303-4

Tuning colour centres at a twisted hexagonal boron nitride interface

Nat Mater. 2022 Aug;21(8):896-902. doi: 10.1038/s41563-022-01303-4. Epub 2022 Jul 14.

Authors

Cong Su^#^{1

2

3}, Fang Zhang^#^{1

2

4

5}, Salman Kahn^#^{1

2}, Brian Shevitski^{1

2

3

6}, Jingwei Jiang^{1

2}, Chunhui Dai^{1

2

3}, Alex Ungar^{1

2

3}, Ji-Hoon Park⁷, Kenji Watanabe⁸, Takashi Taniguchi⁹, Jing Kong⁷, Zikang Tang⁵, Wenqing Zhang⁴, Feng Wang^{1

2

3}, Michael Crommie^{1

2

3}, Steven G Louie^{10

11}, Shaul Aloni¹², Alex Zettl^{13

14

15}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA.
² Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA.
³ Kavli Energy NanoSciences Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA.
⁴ Department of Physics, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China.
⁵ Institute of Applied Physics and Materials Engineering, University of Macau, Macau, China.
⁶ The Molecular Foundry, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA.
⁷ Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.
⁸ Research Centre for Functional Materials, National Institute for Materials Science, Tsukuba, Japan.
⁹ International Centre for Materials Nanoarchitectonics, National Institute for Materials Science, Tsukuba, Japan.
¹⁰ Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA. sglouie@berkeley.edu.
¹¹ Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA. sglouie@berkeley.edu.
¹² The Molecular Foundry, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA. saloni@lbl.gov.
¹³ Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA. azettl@berkeley.edu.
¹⁴ Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA. azettl@berkeley.edu.
¹⁵ Kavli Energy NanoSciences Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA. azettl@berkeley.edu.

^# Contributed equally.

PMID: 35835818
DOI: 10.1038/s41563-022-01303-4

Abstract

The colour centre platform holds promise for quantum technologies, and hexagonal boron nitride has attracted attention due to the high brightness and stability, optically addressable spin states and wide wavelength coverage discovered in its emitters. However, its application is hindered by the typically random defect distribution and complex mesoscopic environment. Here, employing cathodoluminescence, we demonstrate on-demand activation and control of colour centre emission at the twisted interface of two hexagonal boron nitride flakes. Further, we show that colour centre emission brightness can be enhanced by two orders of magnitude by tuning the twist angle. Additionally, by applying an external voltage, nearly 100% brightness modulation is achieved. Our ab initio GW and GW plus Bethe-Salpeter equation calculations suggest that the emission is correlated to nitrogen vacancies and that a twist-induced moiré potential facilitates electron-hole recombination. This mechanism is further exploited to draw nanoscale colour centre patterns using electron beams.

Publication types

Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Boron Compounds*
Color

Substances

Boron Compounds
boron nitride