On-demand generation of shallow silicon vacancy in silicon carbide

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the on-demand creation of shallow silicon vacancies in silicon carbide with high efficiency, significantly enhancing their potential for quantum sensing, information processing, and photonics applications.

Contribution

It introduces optimized implantation and annealing techniques for high-yield, on-demand shallow silicon vacancy generation in silicon carbide, advancing quantum technology applications.

Findings

Higher conversion efficiency with helium ions compared to carbon and hydrogen.

Annealing optimization doubles the conversion efficiency.

Achieved 80% conversion efficiency for single silicon vacancy arrays.

Abstract

Defects in silicon carbide have been explored as promising spin systems in quantum technologies. However, for practical quantum metrology and quantum communication, it is critical to achieve the on-demand shallow spin-defect generation. In this work, we present the generation and characterization of shallow silicon vacancies in silicon carbide by using different implanted ions and annealing conditions. The conversion efficiency of silicon vacancy of helium ions is shown to be higher than that by carbon and hydrogen ions in a wide implanted fluence range. Furthermore, after optimizing annealing conditions, the conversion efficiency can be increased more than 2 times. Due to the high density of the generated ensemble defects, the sensitivity to sense a static magnetic field can be research as high as , which is about 15 times higher than previous results. By carefully optimizing implanted conditions, we further show that a single silicon vacancy array can be generated with about 80 % conversion efficiency, which reaches the highest conversion yield in solid state systems. The results pave the way for using on-demand generated shallow silicon vacancy for quantum information processing and quantum photonics.