Protected valley splitting against interface disorder toward scalable silicon electron spin qubits

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that applying CMOS-compatible uniaxial strain significantly enhances valley splitting in Si/SiGe quantum wells, making it robust against interface disorder and improving the uniformity crucial for scalable silicon spin qubits.

Contribution

The study introduces a novel approach using uniaxial strain to counteract interface disorder effects on valley splitting in silicon quantum wells, supported by atomistic calculations.

Findings

Uniaxial strain linearly restores valley splitting suppressed by disorder.

Strain introduces a new coupling channel reducing disorder susceptibility.

Enhanced valley splitting improves gate uniformity for silicon spin qubits.

Abstract

Regardless of various material design strategies, experimentally achieving substantial and controllable valley splitting in Si/SiGe quantum wells remains a central challenge for ensuring high gate uniformity. This difficulty arises from unavoidable atomic-scale disorder at the interface, caused by alloy randomness, which suppresses valley splitting and, more critically, induces large variations. Here, we demonstrate that CMOS-compatible uniaxial strain can substantially enhance valley splitting, rendering it immune to interface disorder. Atomistic pseudopotential calculations show that uniaxial strain linearly restores the valley splitting suppressed by interfacial disorder, with a large enhancement rate, while keeping disorder-induced variations within a narrow distribution. We reveal that uniaxial strain introduces a new coupling channel between bulk valleys in adjacent Brillouin zones through a small momentum transfer, which markedly reduces the susceptibility of valley splitting to interfacial disorder. These findings establish a viable route to improve gate uniformity in silicon-based spin qubits, paving the way for scalable quantum processors.