NV centers in silicon carbide: from theoretical predictions to experimental observation
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Research Letter
NV centers in silicon carbide: from theoretical predictions to experimental observation H.J. von Bardeleben and J.L. Cantin, Sorbonne Universités, UPMC, Univ. Paris 6, CNRS-UMR 7588, Institut des NanoSciences de Paris, F-75005, Paris, France Address all correspondence to H.J. von Bardeleben at [email protected] (Received 3 May 2017; accepted 7 July 2017)
Abstract NV centers in silicon carbide have been identified in the three main polytypes 3C, 4H, 6H by magnetic resonance and photoluminescence experiments and related ab initio calculations. Their properties show them to be promising centers for applications in quantum technology, similar to the case of NV in diamond. However, their spectral range is in the near-infrared, which should allow their integration in telecommunication systems.
The coherent manipulation, measurement, and entanglement of individual solid-state spins using optical fields have recently become a field of high interest in light of their future application for quantum computing. In the past, two different solid-statebased systems have turned out to be promising in this field: optically active quantum dots and solid-state qubits with the NV center, a carbon vacancy nitrogen donor in diamond, being the most advanced one. Numerous achievements have been reported for this center, such as single defect spectroscopy, initialization, and readout of electronic and nuclear spin states at low and room temperatures, entanglement between electron and nuclear spins and electron spin and photons and two-photon quantum interference from distant NV centers.[1–6] These centers possess long electron spin coherence times, individually addressable optical transitions and long-live intrinsic quantum memories based on nuclear spins. Nevertheless diamond is not an optimal semiconductor material for integrating the NV centers in technologically relevant systems. To overcome this problem a number of theoretical predictions have promoted the search for equivalent defects and in particular NV centers in SiC.[7–9] The authors postulated a number of necessary properties for a defect in order to be suitable for QT applications: (1) the defect must have a bound state with a multiplet groundstate; (2) the groundstate splitting must be large compares to kT; (3) it must have optical transitions, which are pure intracenter like; (4) it must have luminescence for the read out of the qubit state; (5) it must have an optical pumping cycle, which allows the initialization of the spin groundstate. The main arguments for choosing SiC were: (i) SiC is a mature microelectronic material with superior electronic properties and integration facilities, and (ii) NV centers
in SiC should have these required magneto-optical properties just as the NV center in diamond. The microscopic structure of the NV center in diamond is a VC–NC nearest-neighbor pair, which in the 1-chargestate is a spin S = 1 center. The corresponding center in SiC is a VSi–NC nearest-neighbor pair [Figs. 1(a)–(c)]. As SiC occurs in different polytype
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