Letter

Electrically driven single-photon source at room temperature in diamond

Received:
Accepted:
Published online:

Abstract

Single-photon sources that provide non-classical light states on demand have a broad range of applications in quantum communication, quantum computing and metrology1. Single-photon emission has been demonstrated using single atoms2, ions3, molecules4, diamond colour centres5,6 and semiconductor quantum dots7,8,9,10,11. Significant progress in highly efficient8,11 and entangled photons9 sources has recently been shown in semiconductor quantum dots; however, the requirement of cryogenic temperatures due to the necessity to confine carriers is a major obstacle. Here, we show the realization of a stable, room-temperature, electrically driven single-photon source based on a single neutral nitrogen-vacancy centre in a novel diamond diode structure. Remarkably, the generation of electroluminescence follows kinetics fundamentally different from that of photoluminescence with intra-bandgap excitation. This suggests electroluminescence is generated by electron–hole recombination at the defect. Our results prove that functional single defects can be integrated into electronic control structures, which is a crucial step towards elaborate quantum information devices.

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            Acknowledgements

            The authors acknowledge financial support by the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) Precursory Research for Embryonic Science and Technology (PRESTO) programme, as well as KAKENHI (grant nos 22102502 and 23681017), the Strategic Information and Communication R&D Promotion Program (SCOPE), the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) programme, the JST Core Research for Evolutional Science and Technology (CREST) programme, the European Union (EU) via the grants Solid State Quantum Technology and Metrology Using Spins (SQUTEC), DIAMANT and Solid State Systems for Quantum Information Processing (SOLID), the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) via research groups 730, 1482 and 1495, the Max Planck Society, and the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA; grant no. K-67886).

            Author information

            Affiliations

            1. Graduate School of Engineering Science, Osaka University 1-3, Machikane-yama, Toyonaka-city, Osaka, 560-8531, Japan

              • N. Mizuochi

            2. JST PRESTO, 4-1-8 Honcho Kawaguchi, Saitama, 333-0012, Japan

              • N. Mizuochi

            3. Energy Technology Research Institute-National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8568, Japan

              • T. Makino
              • , H. Kato
              • , D. Takeuchi
              • , M. Ogura
              • , H. Okushi
              •  & S. Yamasaki

            4. JST CREST, 4-1-8 Honcho Kawaguchi, Saitama, 333-0012, Japan

              • T. Makino
              • , H. Kato
              • , D. Takeuchi
              • , M. Ogura
              • , H. Okushi
              •  & S. Yamasaki

            5. 3rd Physics Institute and Research Center SCoPE, Pfaffenwaldring 57, D-70550 Stuttgart, Germany

              • M. Nothaft
              • , P. Neumann
              •  & J. Wrachtrup

            6. Institute for Solid State Physics and Optics, Wigner Research Centre for Physics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, PO Box 49, H-1525, Hungary

              • A. Gali

            7. Department of Atomic Physics, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Budafoki út 8, H-1111 Budapest, Hungary

              • A. Gali

            8. Institut für Quantenoptik, Universität Ulm, Albert Einstein Allee 11, D-89069 Ulm, Germany

              • F. Jelezko

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            Contributions

            T.M., H.K., D.T. and M.O. synthesized and fabricated the diamond device. N.M. built a home-made confocal microscope system with assistance from P.N., F.J. and J.W., and carried out the measurements. N.M., M.N., H.O., S.Y., P.N., F.J. and J.W. contributed to the data analysis. A.G. carried out group theory analysis and the ab initio calculations. N.M. and J.W. wrote the manuscript with feedback from all authors. All authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.

            Competing interests

            The authors declare no competing financial interests.

            Corresponding author

            Correspondence to N. Mizuochi.

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