Room Temperature Quantum Emission from Cubic Silicon Carbide Nanoparticles

The photoluminescence (PL) arising from silicon carbide nanoparticles has so far been associated with the quantum confinement effect or to radiative transitions between electronically active surface states. In this work we show that cubic phase silicon carbide nanoparticles with diameters in the range 45–500 nm can host other point defects responsible for photoinduced intrabandgap PL. We demonstrate that these nanoparticles exhibit single photon emission at room temperature with record saturation count rates of 7 × 10⁶ counts/s. The realization of nonclassical emission from SiC nanoparticles extends their potential use from fluorescence biomarker beads to optically active quantum elements for next generation quantum sensing and nanophotonics. The single photon emission is related to single isolated SiC defects that give rise to states within the bandgap

Emission and Nonradiative Decay of Nanodiamond NV Centers in a Low Refractive Index Environment

The nitrogen vacancy (NV) center is the most widely studied single optical defect in diamond with great potential for applications in quantum technologies. Development of practical single-photon devices requires an understanding of the emission under a range of conditions and environments. In this work, we study the properties of a single NV center in nanodiamonds embedded in an air-like silica aerogel environment which provides a new domain for probing the emission behavior of NV centers in nanoscale environments. In this arrangement, the emission rate is governed primarily by the diamond crystal lattice with negligible contribution from the surrounding environment. This is in contrast to the conventional approach of studying nanodiamonds on a glass coverslip. We observe an increase in the mean lifetime due to the absence of a dielectric interface near the emitting dipoles and a distribution arising from the irregularities in the nanodiamond geometry. Our approach results in the estimation of the mean quantum efficiency (∼0.7) of the nanodiamond NV emitters