Efficient single-photon emission via quantum-confined charge funneling to quantum dots
Quantum light sources, particularly single-photon emitters (SPEs), are critical for quantum communications and computing. Among them, III-V semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) have demonstrated superior SPE metrics, including near-unity brightness, high photon purity, and indistinguishability, making them especially suitable for quantum applications. However, their overall quantum efficiency-determined by a product of the internal, excitation, and outcoupling efficiencies-remains limited, primarily due to low (typically below 0.1%) excitation efficiency. To mitigate the low efficiency under non-resonant pumping, here we realize liquid droplet etched GaAs QDs in a microscale 3D AlGaAs charge-carrier funnel. The funnel channels charge carriers to the QD and enhances the overall emission efficiency by over one order of magnitude while preserving the SPE behavior. We reveal that a modified energy landscape around the QD leads to the excitation efficiency improvement. These energy landscape-modified QDs can be operated with optical excitation up to 10 μm away, raising the promise of efficient electrically driven QD SPEs for quantum information systems.
Authors
- Darryl M. Shima (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0004-6569-9358)
- Douglas V. Pete
- Samuel Prescott (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0003-5256-3075)
- Sadhvikas Addamane (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2958-3767)
- Oleg Mitrofanov (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3510-2675)
- Prasad P. Iyer (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6898-3619)
- Igal Brener (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2139-5182)
- Ganesh Balakrishnan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9073-3739)
- Andrew Mounce (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8115-2764)
- Jasmine J. Mah (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0008-4847-1529)
- Ting S. Luk
- Pingping Chen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7898-9117)
- Jaeyeon Yu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0000-3975-3745)
- Hyunseung Jung (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3925-3238)
- Sanghyeok Park (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0002-2607-4174)
- Khalifa M. Azizur-Rahman (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0007-4101-5152)
Institutions
- University of New Mexico (US)
- University of Colorado Boulder (US)
- Sandia National Laboratories (US)
- Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies (US)
- University College London (GB)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Communications Materials
- Published
- 2025-11-25
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s43246-025-01017-5
- Primary Topic
- Semiconductor Quantum Structures and Devices
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- U.S. Department of Energy
- Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies
- Office of Science
- National Nuclear Security Administration
- Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
- Basic Energy Sciences
- Laboratory Directed Research and Development
- Sandia National Laboratories