A simple twist of ultra-thin material gave scientists surprising control over quantum light, bringing future quantum technologies closer to reality.
University of Technology Sydney researchers have discovered a new way to control tiny quantum light sources by twisting ultra-thin layers of hexagonal boron nitride, a breakthrough that could help move quantum technologies closer to real-world use.
The team found that rotating stacked layers of the material allows them to precisely tune the behavior of quantum light emitters, tiny defects that can produce individual particles of light. Greater control over these emitters is considered an important step toward future technologies including quantum computing, secure communications, and ultra-sensitive sensors.
Twisting Layers Changes Quantum Light
Lead author Dr. Angus Gale said one of the biggest challenges has been turning these quantum emitters from laboratory curiosities into practical devices.
“You can measure these quantum emitters and see that they exist, but it’s hard to make them work in practice. This gives us a lever to get closer to that – a step towards the realization of quantum technologies,” said Dr. Gale.
During the experiments, the researchers were able to produce a large shift in both the color and wavelength of the emitted light. What made the result especially unusual was that they could repeatedly lift, rotate, and restack the material instead of fixing it at a single twist angle, which is how many similar experiments are performed.
“We’re leveraging the fact that this material, hexagonal boron nitride (hBN), is layered. We can pick it up, stack it, twist it, and use that twist to modify the emitters. You can’t really do that with traditional materials like diamond or silicon carbide.”
Why Hexagonal Boron Nitride Is Different
According to Gale, the layered nature of hBN provides a much greater degree of control than scientists typically achieve with conventional solid-state materials.
“The benefit is that we used this twistable platform to shift the emission by a very significant amount,” said Gale. “Often when you control these systems, the amount of manipulation is very limited, but in this case the shift was much larger than expected.
“Rather than trying to make hBN defects behave like a traditional solid-state hosts, we took advantage of hBN’s own strength: its thin, layered, twistable structure.”
To illustrate the concept, Gale compares the material to slices of cheese instead of a solid block.
“With a block of cheese, you can’t really get to the flavor in the middle. But with slices, you can peel away layers, put them back together and change how they interact,” he said.
A Step Toward Future Quantum Technologies
Supervising author Professor Igor Aharonovich said twisting layered materials can reveal entirely new physical behavior that is not present in the individual layers alone.
“You can take two layers that don’t do much on their own, put them together at a specific angle, and suddenly you have a completely different system,” said Professor Aharonovich.
He added that this growing ability to control quantum materials could eventually support advances in quantum computing, quantum communications, and quantum sensing. Those technologies could improve fields ranging from healthcare and cybersecurity to GPS, while giving scientists greater control over the fundamental building blocks needed to make practical quantum devices a reality.
Reference: “Twist-controlled modulation of quantum emitters in hexagonal boron nitride” by Angus Gale, Seungjun Lee, Seungmin Park, Evan Williams, Helen Zhi Jie Zeng, James Liddle-Wesolowski, Young Duck Kim, Milos Toth, Tony Low and Igor Aharonovich, 19 June 2026, Science Advances.
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aec0101
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