The first paragraph in the "Isolation of single emitters in silicon" section of the scientific paper[1] says that they "implanted" carbon ions into silicon. The

The first paragraph in the "Isolation of single emitters in silicon" section of the scientific paper[1] says that they "implanted" carbon ions into silicon. The rest of the paper discusses how they were able to detect these point defects (carbon atoms). The outlook, as other commenters mentioned, is that this means we could theoretically detect other single atom point defects in silicon, such as impurities or quantum dots. [1] http://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-020-00499-0 http://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-020-00499-0