Publication Details

Abstract

Single-photon emitters (SPEs) in two-dimensional materials are promising candidates for the future generation of quantum photonic technologies. In this work, we experimentally determine the quantum efficiency (QE) of SPEs in few-layer hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN). We employ a metal hemisphere that is attached to the tip of an atomic force microscope to directly measure the lifetime variation of the SPEs as the tip approaches the ℎ-BN. This technique enables nondestructive, yet direct and absolute measurement of the QE of SPEs. We find that the emitters exhibit very high QEs approaching (87$\pm$7)\% at wavelengths of $\approx$580{\hspace{0.167em}}}{\hspace{0.167em}}}nm, which is among the highest QEs recorded for a solid-state SPE $\~$ The cover of the corresponding Optica issue shows an illustration of our work. $\~$