Enhancing the Purity of Deterministically Placed Quantum Emitters in Monolayer WSe2

ACS Nano. 2022 Dec 27;16(12):20956-20963. doi: 10.1021/acsnano.2c08553. Epub 2022 Nov 29.

Abstract

We present a method utilizing an applied electrostatic potential for suppressing the broad defect bound excitonic emission in two-dimensional materials (2DMs) which otherwise inhibits the purity of strain induced single photon emitters (SPEs). Our heterostructure consists of a WSe2 monolayer on a polymer in which strain has been deterministically introduced via an atomic force microscope (AFM) tip. We show that by applying an electrostatic potential, the broad defect bound background is suppressed at cryogenic temperatures, resulting in a substantial improvement in single photon purity demonstrated by a 10-fold reduction of the correlation function g(2)(0) value from 0.73 to 0.07. In addition, we see a 2-fold increase in the intensity of the SPEs as well as the ability to activate/deactivate the emitters at certain wavelengths. Finally, we present an increase in the operating temperature of the SPE up to 110 K, a 50 K increase when compared with the results when no electrostatic potential is present.

Keywords: electrostatic biasing; single photon emitter; strain engineering; tungsten diselenide; two-dimensional materials.