  Due to the inevitable loss in communication channels, the distance of
entanglement distribution is limited to approximately 100 km on the ground.
Quantum repeater can circumvent this problem by utilizing quantum memory and
entanglement swapping. As the elementary functional nodes for quantum repeater,
the heralded generation of two-party entanglement between two remote nodes has
only been realized with built-in-type quantum memories. These schemes suffer
from the trade-off between multiplexing capacity and deterministic property and
hence hinder their way to efficient quantum repeaters. Here we present the
first experimental demonstration of functional quantum repeater nodes using
absorptive quantum memories. We build two nodes separated by 3.5 m, each
contains a polarization-entangled photon-pair source and a solid-state quantum
memory. A joint Bell-state measurement in the middle station heralds the
successful generation of maximally-entangled states between the two quantum
memories with a fidelity of (80.4$\pm$2.1)%. The quantum memories used here are
compatible with deterministic entanglement sources and can support multiplexing
simultaneously, which paves the way to the construction of solid-state quantum
repeaters and high-speed quantum networks.
