Quantum emission from hexagonal boron nitride monolayers

Artificial atomic systems in solids are widely considered the leading physical system for a variety of quantum technologies, including quantum communications, computing and metrology. To date, however, room-temperature quantum emitters have only been observed in wide-bandgap semiconductors such as diamond and silicon carbide, nanocrystal quantum dots, and most recently in carbon nanotubes. Here, we demonstrate room-temperature, polarized single-photon emission from a colour centre in two-dimensional hexagonal boron nitride. The emitters emit at the red and the near infrared spectral range and exhibit narrowband ultra bright emission (\textasciitilde full width at half maximum of below 10 nm with more than three million counts/s). Density functional theory calculations indicate that vacancy-related defects are a probable source of the emission. Our results demonstrate the unprecedented potential of van der Waals crystals for large-scale nanophotonics and quantum information processing.