A photonic platform hosting telecom photon emitters in silicon

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the integration of telecom photon emitters into silicon nanopillars using CMOS-compatible fabrication, enhancing photon extraction and paving the way for scalable quantum photonic circuits.

Contribution

It introduces a novel CMOS-compatible nanofabrication method for integrating single-photon emitters into silicon photonic structures at scale.

Findings

Waveguiding of 1278 nm emission along silicon nanopillars

Enhanced brightness and photon extraction efficiency

Scalable integration compatible with quantum photonic circuits

Abstract

Silicon, a ubiquitous material in modern computing, is an emerging platform for realizing a source of indistinguishable single-photons on demand. The integration of recently discovered single-photon emitters in silicon into photonic structures, is advantageous to exploit their full potential for integrated photonic quantum technologies. Here, we show the integration of telecom photon emitters in a photonic platform consisting of silicon nanopillars. We developed a CMOS-compatible nanofabrication method, enabling the production of thousands of individual nanopillars per square millimeter with state-of-the-art photonic-circuit pitch, all the while being free of fabrication-related radiation damage defects. We found a waveguiding effect of the 1278 nm-G center emission along individual pillars accompanied by improved brightness, photoluminescence signal-to-noise ratio and photon extraction efficiency compared to that of bulk silicon. These results unlock clear pathways to monolithically integrating single-photon emitters into a photonic platform at a scale that matches the required pitch of quantum photonic circuits.