A Light-Hole Quantum Well on Silicon

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a silicon-compatible germanium quantum well with strain-engineered light-hole states, enabling precise control of hole states for quantum communication and sensing applications.

Contribution

It introduces a novel germanium quantum well on silicon with strain-tuning to achieve light-hole ground states and controllable optical properties.

Findings

Achieved >1% in-plane tensile strain using germanium-tin buffer layers.

Demonstrated sharp interfaces with sub-nanometer broadening.

Observed room-temperature excitonic transitions tunable by strain and thickness.

Abstract

The quiet quantum environment of holes in solid-state devices has been at the core of increasingly reliable architectures for quantum processors and memories.1-6 However, due to the lack of scalable materials to properly tailor the valence band character and its energy offsets, the precise engineering of light-hole (LH) states remains a serious obstacle toward coherent photon-spin interfaces needed for a direct mapping of the quantum information encoded in photon flying qubits to stationary spin processor.4-9 Herein, to alleviate this long-standing limitation we demonstrate an all-group IV low-dimensional system consisting of highly tensile strained germanium quantum well grown on silicon allowing new degrees of freedom to control and manipulate the hole states. Wafer-level, high bi-isotropic in-plane tensile strain ($>1\%$) is achieved using strain-engineered, metastable germanium-tin alloyed buffer layers yielding quantum wells with LH ground state, high $g$-factor anisotropy, and a tunable splitting of the hole subbands. The epitaxial heterostructures display sharp interfaces with sub-nanometer broadening and show room-temperature excitonic transitions that are modulated and extended to the mid-wave infrared by controlling strain and thickness. This ability to engineer quantum structures with LH selective confinement and controllable optical response enables manufacturable silicon-compatible platforms relevant to integrated quantum communication and sensing technologies.