A team from the University of Maryland (UMD) has been awarded $1 million by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop methods for generating single photons at room temperature in semiconducting carbon nanotubes.

The project, which could result in new interfaces between electronic circuits and photonic devices, is part of a $31 million NSF effort aiming to fund transformational quantum research that will enable the U.S. to lead a new quantum technology revolution.

The “Integrated Circuits of Single-Photon Sources from Organic Color-Centers” project is part of an initiative known as Research Advanced by Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering-Transformational Advances in Quantum Systems (RAISE-TAQS). The RAISE-TAQS effort is designed to encourage scientists to pursue exploratory, cutting-edge concepts in quantum research.

“Single-photon sources are a fundamental element for quantum information science and technology. However, it has been extremely difficult to prepare single photons with high efficiency,” said YuHuang Wang, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at UMD and the principal investigator of the grant. “If successful, this work may further lead to a high-quality single-photon source that can be integrated directly into solid-state devices for photonic quantum information processing.”

The UMD award is one of 25 RAISE-TAQS projects, which will help lead to systems and proof-of-concept validations in quantum sensing, communication, computing, and simulations. In addition to the RAISE-TAQS program, which accounts for $25 million of the total $31 million awarded for quantum research, the NSF also made an additional $6 million in grants via the related Research Advanced by Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering-Engineering Quantum Integrated Platforms for Quantum Communication (RAISE-EQuIP).