MSRC speakers from CHIME, ELMIC and MEERCAT will be featured at the Center for Integrated Nanotechnology's (CINT's) 2025 Annual User Meeting happening September 15–16 at the Santa Fe Convention Center, Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Congratulations to CHIME-NSOC's Duke University-LANL team on their recent publication — Solution-Processed Ultrafast, Room-Temperature Single-Photon Source at 1550 nm, ACS Nano 2025, 19, 20, 19035–19045! https://doi.org/10.1021/acsnano.4c18261
Single photons are cornerstones of quantum technologies. The need for an ultrafast, bright, and stable photon source emitting in the telecom-band at ∼1550 nm, ideally operating at room temperature, has resulted in a decades-long quest. However, to date, telecom sources are hampered by inherently long radiative lifetimes that severely limit brightness and speed, material instability, or the need for cryogenic operation. Here, stable colloidal PbS/CdS quantum dots emitting at 1550 nm (C-band) or 1350 nm (O-band) are embedded in a solution-synthesized nanoparticle-on-mirror cavity. Single cavity-coupled quantum dots experience extreme Purcell factors up to 10,700, resulting in ultrafast emission lifetimes of 65 ps, along with near-complete blinking suppression. As a result, 12 million single photons are emitted per second affording a single photon source at 1550 nm that is more than two orders of magnitude brighter than previously possible at room-temperature. These telecom-band single photon sources are solut [...]