High-efficiency generation of nanoscale single silicon vacancy defect array in silicon carbide

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a method for creating nanoscale silicon vacancy defect arrays in silicon carbide using ion implantation without annealing, enabling scalable quantum photonic and sensing applications.

Contribution

It introduces a novel ion implantation technique to generate well-placed, nanoscale $V_{Si}$ defects in SiC without annealing, advancing quantum device fabrication.

Findings

Defects generated in pre-determined locations with tens of nanometers resolution.

Defects are shallow, approximately 40 nm below the surface.

Method enables integration with photonic structures for improved emission.

Abstract

Color centers in silicon carbide have increasingly attracted attention in recent years owing to their excellent properties such as single photon emission, good photostability, and long spin coherence time even at room temperature. As compared to diamond which is widely used for holding Nitrogen-vacancy centers, SiC has the advantage in terms of large-scale, high-quality and low cost growth, as well as advanced fabrication technique in optoelectronics, leading to the prospects for large scale quantum engineering. In this paper, we report experimental demonstration of the generation of nanoscale $V_{Si}$ single defect array through ion implantation without the need of annealing. $V_{Si}$ defects are generated in pre-determined locations with resolution of tens of nanometers. This can help in integrating $V_{Si}$ defects with the photonic structures which, in turn, can improve the emission and collection efficiency of $V_{Si}$ defects when it is used in spin photonic quantum network. On the other hand, the defects are shallow and they are generated $\sim 40nm$ below the surface which can serve as critical resources in quantum sensing application.