Strong light emission from a defective hexagonal boron nitride monolayer coupled to near-touching random plasmonic nanounits

Abstract

In this Letter, we demonstrate strong light emission from defective hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) defect centers upon their coupling with disorder near-touching plasmonic units. Based on numerical simulations and characterization results, the plasmonic design at thin layer thicknesses of 20 nm can provide above 2 orders of magnitude enhance ment in photoluminescence (PL) spectra. Moreover, this plasmonic platform shortens the luminescence lifetime of the emitters. The proposed design can be easily extended to other plasmonic-emitter combinations where strong light–matter interaction can be achieved using large-scale compatible routes.