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Fabrication and nanophotonic waveguide integration of silicon carbide colour centres with preserved spin-optical coherence

Nature Materials volume 21, pages 67–73 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

Optically addressable spin defects in silicon carbide (SiC) are an emerging platform for quantum information processing compatible with nanofabrication processes and device control used by the semiconductor industry. System scalability towards large-scale quantum networks demands integration into nanophotonic structures with efficient spin–photon interfaces. However, degradation of the spin-optical coherence after integration in nanophotonic structures has hindered the potential of most colour centre platforms. Here, we demonstrate the implantation of silicon vacancy centres (VSi) in SiC without deterioration of their intrinsic spin-optical properties. In particular, we show nearly lifetime-limited photon emission and high spin-coherence times for single defects implanted in bulk as well as in nanophotonic waveguides created by reactive ion etching. Furthermore, we take advantage of the high spin-optical coherences of VSi centres in waveguides to demonstrate controlled operations on nearby nuclear spin qubits, which is a crucial step towards fault-tolerant quantum information distribution based on cavity quantum electrodynamics.

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Fig. 1: Properties of He+ ion-implanted V2 centres.
Fig. 2: Properties of V2 centres in nanofabricated waveguides.
Fig. 3: Electron spin properties of nanofabricated V2 centres.
Fig. 4: Control over nuclear spin qubits.

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Data availability

Source data are provided with this paper and at https://doi.org/10.18419/darus-2107. Any further data are available from the corresponding author upon request.

Code availability

Fits to the data were made using Python software. The fit functions, parameters and simulations of hyperfine interactions can be made available upon request.

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Acknowledgements

C.B., F.K. and J.W. thank A. Weible, R. Reuter, A. Zechmeister, J. Meinel, R. Nagy, J. Körber, M. Krumrein, M. Joliffe, M. Niethammer, I. Gediz, J. Zatsch, D. Dasari, Y.-C. Chen, K.-M. Fu, D. Lukin and J. Vučković for experimental assistance and fruitful discussions. We further acknowledge technical support from Swabian Instruments GmbH and Toptica Photonics AG. G.V.A. thanks U. Kentsch for the proton implantation assistance and support from the Ion Beam Centre at Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR). N.T.S. acknowledges the Swedish Research Council (grant no. VR 2016-04068). J.U.-H. acknowledges the Swedish Energy Agency (grant no. 43611-1) and Swedish Research Council (grant no. 2020-05444). N.T.S. and J.U.-H. thank the EU H2020 project QuanTELCO (grant no. 862721) and the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation (grant no. KAW 2018.0071). S.M. acknowledges support by the UC Davis Summer GSR Award. M.R. acknowledges support by the National Science Foundation under the grant CAREER-2047564. J.W. acknowledges the EU-FET Flagship on Quantum Technologies through the project ASTERIQS (grant agreement no. 820394), the European Research Council (ERC) grant SMel, the Max Planck Society and the German Research Foundation (SPP 1601, FOR 2724). F.K. and J.W. acknowledge support by the EU-FET Flagship on Quantum Technologies through the project QIA (grant agreement no. 820445), as well as the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) for the project Q.Link.X (grant agreement no. 16KIS0867).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. 3rd Institute of Physics, IQST, and Research Centre SCoPE, University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany

    Charles Babin, Rainer Stöhr, Naoya Morioka, Tobias Linkewitz, Timo Steidl, Raphael Wörnle, Di Liu, Erik Hesselmeier, Vadim Vorobyov, Andrej Denisenko, Florian Kaiser & Jörg Wrachtrup

  2. Institute for Chemical Research, Kyoto University, Uji, Japan

    Naoya Morioka

  3. 4th Institute of Physics, IQST, and Research Centre SCoPE, University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany

    Mario Hentschel

  4. Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Systems and Device Technology IISB, Erlangen, Germany

    Christian Gobert & Patrick Berwian

  5. Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf, Institute of Ion Beam Physics and Materials Research, Dresden, Germany

    Georgy V. Astakhov

  6. Department of Sensoric Surfaces and Functional Interfaces, Leibniz-Institute of Surface Engineering (IOM), Leipzig, Germany

    Wolfgang Knolle

  7. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California, Davis, CA, USA

    Sridhar Majety, Pranta Saha & Marina Radulaski

  8. Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biology, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden

    Nguyen Tien Son & Jawad Ul-Hassan

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Contributions

C.B. and F.K. conceived the experiments. F.K. and J.W. directed the research. R.S., T.L., R.W. and A.D. produced masks and performed helium ion implantation. C.G. and P.B. performed helium implantation simulations. R.S., T.L., R.W. and G.V.A. produced masks and designed proton implantation. M.H. performed silicon ion implantation. W.K. performed electron irradiation. C.B., R.S. and T.L. produced SiC waveguides. V.V., S.M., P.S. and M.R. simulated beam profiles in waveguides. N.T.S. and J.U.-H. grew the SiC samples. C.B., N.M., T.L., T.S., R.W., D.L., E.H. and F.K. performed the experiments. C.B., N.M., T.L., T.S., D.L. and F.K. developed and improved software. C.B., R.W. and F.K. analysed the data. C.B. and F.K. developed the theoretical framework for nuclear spin control. C.B., M.R., F.K. and J.W. wrote the manuscript. All authors provided helpful comments during the writing process.

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Correspondence to Florian Kaiser.

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Supplementary information

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Babin, C., Stöhr, R., Morioka, N. et al. Fabrication and nanophotonic waveguide integration of silicon carbide colour centres with preserved spin-optical coherence. Nat. Mater. 21, 67–73 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-021-01148-3

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