2024/12/23 by Ignacio Fernández Chacón, Andrea Echeverri, Chacon, Ignacio +5 · 1 citation
Chemistry · Materials Science · #Boron and Carbon Nanomaterials Research #FOS: Physical sciences #Fullerene Chemistry and Applications #Graphene research and applications #Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) #Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) #Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2412.17457
openalex publication_date 2024/12/23 · openalex created_date 2024/12/25 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Substitutional carbon defects in hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) are prominent single photon emitters (SPEs), and their potential for spin activity (S≥1) is particularly intriguing. While studies have largely focused on intra-layer defects, we employ density functional theory (DFT) to investigate inter-layer dimers of identical carbon species (CXCX). We demonstrate that these CXCX pairs can exhibit a stable triplet spin state at room temperature when closely spaced (e.g., within 3.5-7.1 Å) across hBN layers. As their separation increases beyond this range (e.g., >7 Å), they transition into weakly interacting S=1/2 pairs, characterized by singlet-triplet degeneracy. This regime is predicted to result in a very small zero-field splitting for the triplet manifold, offering a potential explanation for certain optically detected magnetic resonance (ODMR) signals. The zero-phonon line (ZPL) energy of these inter-layer CXCX pairs is found to be practically monochromatic and within the visible range. Furthermore, we identify specific CBCB inter-layer configurations exhibiting atypical low-energy phonon replicas due to out-of-plane vibrational coupling, a finding that may clarify the vibronic structure of other hBN emitters, such as the 'yellow emitters'.