Single-photon emitting diode in silicon carbide

TL;DR

This paper reports the fabrication of bright, stable, room-temperature single-photon emitting diodes in silicon carbide, advancing quantum technology applications like cryptography and quantum computing.

Contribution

It demonstrates the first fabrication of electrically driven single-photon emitters in silicon carbide with high brightness and stability at room temperature.

Findings

Photon count rate exceeds 300 kHz

Emitters show full polarization and stability in continuous and pulsed modes

Atomic origin of the single-photon source is proposed

Abstract

Electrically driven single-photon emitting devices have immediate applications in quantum cryptography, quantum computation and single-photon metrology. Mature device fabrication protocols and the recent observations of single defect systems with quantum functionalities make silicon carbide (SiC) an ideal material to build such devices. Here, we demonstrate the fabrication of bright single photon emitting diodes. The electrically driven emitters display fully polarized output, superior photon statistics (with a count rate of $>$300 kHz), and stability in both continuous and pulsed modes, all at room temperature. The atomic origin of the single photon source is proposed. These results provide a foundation for the large scale integration of single photon sources into a broad range of applications, such as quantum cryptography or linear optics quantum computing.