Room-temperature coherent manipulation of single-spin qubits in silicon carbide with a high readout contrast

Qiang Li; Jun-Feng Wang; Fei-Fei Yan; Ji-Yang Zhou; Han-Feng Wang; He Liu; Li-Ping Guo; Xiong Zhou; Adam Gali; Zheng-Hao Liu; Zu-Qing Wang; Kai Sun; Guo-Ping Guo; Jian-Shun Tang; Hao Li; Li-Xing You; Jin-Shi Xu; Chuan-Feng Li; Guang-Can Guo

doi:10.1093/nsr/nwab122

Room-temperature coherent manipulation of single-spin qubits in silicon carbide with a high readout contrast

Natl Sci Rev. 2021 Jul 5;9(5):nwab122. doi: 10.1093/nsr/nwab122. eCollection 2022 May.

Authors

Qiang Li¹, Jun-Feng Wang¹, Fei-Fei Yan¹, Ji-Yang Zhou¹, Han-Feng Wang¹, He Liu¹, Li-Ping Guo², Xiong Zhou², Adam Gali³, Zheng-Hao Liu¹, Zu-Qing Wang¹, Kai Sun¹, Guo-Ping Guo¹, Jian-Shun Tang¹, Hao Li⁴, Li-Xing You⁴, Jin-Shi Xu¹, Chuan-Feng Li¹, Guang-Can Guo¹

Affiliations

¹ CAS Key Laboratory of Quantum Information, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China.
² Key Laboratory of Artificial Micro- and Nano-structures of Ministry of Education and School of Physics and Technology, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China.
³ Department of Atomic Physics, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Budafoki út. 8, H-1111, Hungary.
⁴ State Key Laboratory of Functional Materials for Informatics, Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Shanghai 200050, China.

Abstract

Spin defects in silicon carbide (SiC) with mature wafer-scale fabrication and micro/nano-processing technologies have recently drawn considerable attention. Although room-temperature single-spin manipulation of colour centres in SiC has been demonstrated, the typically detected contrast is less than 2[Formula: see text], and the photon count rate is also low. Here, we present the coherent manipulation of single divacancy spins in 4H-SiC with a high readout contrast ([Formula: see text]) and a high photon count rate (150 kilo counts per second) under ambient conditions, which are competitive with the nitrogen-vacancy centres in diamond. Coupling between a single defect spin and a nearby nuclear spin is also observed. We further provide a theoretical explanation for the high readout contrast by analysing the defect levels and decay paths. Since the high readout contrast is of utmost importance in many applications of quantum technologies, this work might open a new territory for SiC-based quantum devices with many advanced properties of the host material.

Keywords: bright photon emission; high readout contrast; silicon carbide; single divacancy defects; spin coherent control.