High-Performance Near-Infrared Quantum Emission from Color Centers in hBN

TL;DR

This paper reports a scalable method to produce stable, bright, near-infrared single-photon emitters in hexagonal boron nitride, advancing quantum communication technologies.

Contribution

The authors demonstrate a simple oxygen-plasma process to create high-quality NIR quantum emitters in hBN with exceptional stability and spectral properties.

Findings

Emitters operate in the 700-971 nm range with MHz brightness.

Achieve single-photon purity up to 99.9% and linewidths down to 2.7 GHz.

Show resistance to photobleaching and spectral stability over time.

Abstract

Color centers hosted in hexagonal boron nitride have emerged as a highly promising platform for single-photon emission and spin-photon technologies relevant to quantum communication and quantum networking. As a wide-bandgap van der Waals material, hBN can host optically active quantum defects across a broad spectral range. Here, we demonstrate a simple and scalable oxygen-plasma process that reproducibly creates single quantum emitters in hBN with blinking-free zero-phonon lines spanning the near-infrared from 700 up to 971 nm. These emitters combine MHz-level brightness, single-photon purity up to 99.9\%, and ultranarrow cryogenic linewidths down to 2.7~GHz under quasi-resonant excitation, placing them in a particularly attractive regime for quantum photonics. Photostability measurements further reveal resistance to photobleaching, sub-nm spectral stability over long timescales, and near-shot-noise-limited intensity fluctuations. Analysis of the phonon sidebands shows weak vibronic coupling and ZPL-dominated emission, with Debye--Waller factors approaching 50\%. Control experiments together with EDS elemental mapping support oxygen incorporation as a necessary ingredient in activating the NIR emitter population, while first-principles calculations identify O$_N$V$_N$ and O$_N$V$_N$H as the leading defect candidates. These results establish a high-performance NIR quantum-emitter platform in hBN for free-space quantum networking and future integrated quantum-photonic architectures.