SPUD: Single-Photon Unimolecular Devices

单光子发射器在量子信息处理中起着关键作用，具有更快和更安全的通信、更高效率的计算以及前所未有的灵敏度的计量/传感的前景。在可能的现有技术中，基于“单量子”发射器的电驱动源-隔离的两级系统-在未来的可扩展性，低运营成本，易于集成在现有的经典设备和可能的单片制造方面提供了显着的优势。然而，仍然没有“理想的”按需（确定性）单光子发射器，并且每一种提出的技术都存在效率缺陷，或者在实验室概念验证之外的扩展方面存在挑战。在SPUD中，我建议使用单分子，通过电线和化学焊接到两个纳米电极上（“单分子结”），作为单光子源。孤立的单分子的两能级性质导致非经典光发射的理论上理想的行为，并且它们还可以提供减小的尺寸，无数结构的巨大可探索化学空间，易于集成在混合器件中，并且它们依赖于廉价且无毒的材料-碳，氮，氧等。但直到最近的发展才允许它们稳定和可重复地集成在电子电路中，从而提供了利用它们将电流转换为光的诱人可能性，一次一个光子。在这个项目中，我们将证明单分子结可以是高效的，按需的单光子源，并且它们的结构所赋予的实验自由度为利用它们的特性提供了一个独特的平台，合并了分子电子学和分子光子学领域，为未来的量子技术提供了一种独特的可定制的设备。

Single-photon emitters play a key role in quantum information processing, with the prospect of faster and more secure communication, computing with increased efficiency and metrology/sensing with unprecedented sensitivity. Of the possible existing technologies, electrically-driven sources based on "single-quantum" emitters - isolated two-level systems - offer significant advantages in terms of future scalability, low operational costs, ease of integration in existing classical devices and possible monolithic fabrication. There is, however, still no "ideal" on-demand (deterministic) single-photon emitter, and every proposed technology suffers from efficiency drawbacks or provides challenges in scaling beyond the laboratory proof-of-concept. The race for the ideal single-photon source is on. In SPUD, I propose to use single molecules, electrically wired and chemically soldered to two nanoelectrodes ("single-molecule junctions"), as single-photon sources. The two-level nature of isolated single-molecules results in a theoretically ideal behaviour for non-classical light emission, and they can also offer reduced size, a vast explorable chemical space of myriad of structures, ease of integration in hybrid devices and they rely on inexpensive and non-toxic materials - carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, etc. All these properties have been known since the early 1990s, but only recent development allow their stable and reproducible integration in electronic circuits, thus offering the enticing possibility of using them to convert electrical current into light, one photon at a time. In this project, we will demonstrate that single-molecule junctions can be efficient, on-demand single-photon sources, and that the experimental freedom granted by their structure offers a unique platform for the exploitation of their properties, merging the fields of molecular electronics and molecular photonics to deliver a uniquely tailorable class of devices for future quantum technologies.