
Niko Nikolay, Noah Mendelson, Ersan Özelci, Bernd Sontheimer, Florian Böhm, Günter Kewes, Milos Toth, Igor Aharonovich, and Oliver Benson (2019)
Direct measurement of quantum efficiency of single-photon emitters in hexagonal boron nitride
Optica, 6(8):1084-1088.
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±7)% at wavelengths of ≈580 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.

