Broad Diversity of Near-Infrared Single-Photon Emitters in Silicon

A. Durand, Y. Baron, W. Redjem, T. Herzig, A. Benali, S. Pezzagna, J. Meijer, A. Yu. Kuznetsov, J.-M. Gérard, I. Robert-Philip, M. Abbarchi, V. Jacques, G. Cassabois, and A. Dréau

Phys. Rev. Lett. 126, 083602 – Published 22 February 2021

Abstract

We report the detection of individual emitters in silicon belonging to seven different families of optically active point defects. These fluorescent centers are created by carbon implantation of a commercial silicon-on-insulator wafer usually employed for integrated photonics. Single photon emission is demonstrated over the $1.1 - 1.55 μ m$ range, spanning the O and C telecom bands. We analyze their photoluminescence spectra, dipolar emissions, and optical relaxation dynamics at 10 K. For a specific family, we show a constant emission intensity at saturation from 10 K to temperatures well above the 77 K liquid nitrogen temperature. Given the advanced control over nanofabrication and integration in silicon, these individual artificial atoms are promising systems to investigate for Si-based quantum technologies.

Received 31 August 2020
Accepted 21 January 2021

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.126.083602

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Point defects Quantum communication Quantum optics with artificial atoms Single photon sources

Atomic, Molecular & OpticalCondensed Matter, Materials & Applied Physics

Authors & Affiliations

A. Durand ¹, Y. Baron ¹, W. Redjem¹, T. Herzig ², A. Benali³, S. Pezzagna², J. Meijer², A. Yu. Kuznetsov⁴, J.-M. Gérard ⁵, I. Robert-Philip¹, M. Abbarchi ³, V. Jacques¹, G. Cassabois ¹, and A. Dréau ^1,*

¹Laboratoire Charles Coulomb, Université de Montpellier and CNRS, 34095 Montpellier, France
²Division of Applied Quantum Systems, Felix-Bloch Institute for Solid-State Physics, University Leipzig, Linnéestraße 5, 04103 Leipzig, Germany
³CNRS, Aix-Marseille Université, Centrale Marseille, IM2NP, UMR 7334, Campus de St. Jérôme, 13397 Marseille, France
⁴Department of Physics, University of Oslo, NO-0316 Oslo, Norway
⁵Department of Physics, IRIG-PHELIQS, Univ. Grenoble Alpes and CEA, F-38000 Grenoble, France

^*Corresponding author. anais.dreau@umontpellier.fr

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Vol. 126, Iss. 8 — 26 February 2021

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Images

Figure 1
Isolation of seven families of single defects in silicon. (a) PL raster scan recorded at 10 K under excitation of the carbon-implanted SOI sample with a 532 nm laser at $10 μ W$ . Each isolated bright spot is a single emitter. (b) Second-order autocorrelation function $g^{2} (τ)$ measured on a defect belonging to the family SD-1. At zero delay, the curve displays a strong antibunching below the single-emitter threshold: $g^{(2)} (0) < 0.5$ . There is no background correction. Data are fitted (solid line) with a two-level model [28]. (c) PL spectra recorded on seven different individual single-photon emitters. The bottom spectrum is associated with the G center in silicon, recently isolated at single scale [18]. The spectra SD-1 to SD-6 correspond to six families of single emitters randomly distributed over the sample. (d) Histogram of the number of defects per family.
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Figure 2
Spectral properties of individual defects. (a) Comparison of the phonon sideband for the defects with a ZPL. The spectra are normalized to the ZPL maximum and plotted with respect to their ZPL energy $E_{ZPL}$ . The vertical lines show the position of the first phonon replica at 9.5 meV and 14.5 meV. The gray-shaded area indicates the silicon-phonon density of states. (b),(c) Typical PL spectra measured on individual defects for families G and SD-2, respectively. The spectra are plotted with respect to the mean ZPL energy position $⟨ E_{ZPL} ⟩$ . (d),(e) Distribution of the ZPL energy shift compared to the middle energy for the same defect families.
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Figure 3
PL polarization and excited state lifetime measurements. (a) Emission polarization diagram measured on single defects from families SD-1 to SD-4. The PL signal is recorded while rotating a polarizer in the detection path and corrected from background counts. The 0° and 90° directions match the crystal axes $[110]$ and $[1 \bar{1} 0]$ . Solid lines are fits using a $\cos^{2} (θ)$ function. (b) Time-resolved PL decay recorded on the same defects under 50 ps pulse excitation at 532 nm. The excited-state lifetime is extracted by fitting the data with a single exponential function (solid line). Data related to SD-5 and SD-6 defects can be found in the Supplemental Material [25].
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Figure 4
Evolution of the optical saturation curves with temperature. (a),(b) Background-corrected PL saturation curves measured respectively on a single G defect and a single SD-2 defect for different temperatures. Data is fitted with Eq. (1) to extract the saturation power $P_{sat}$ and intensity at saturation $I_{sat}$ . (c) Corresponding evolution of $I_{sat}$ and $P_{sat}$ (inset) with temperature for the SD-2 (blue) and G (purple) defects. The dash lines are data fitting (see main text for $P_{sat}$ data). The $I_{sat}$ data for the SD-2 defect are fairly reproduced by the function $a^{'} / {1 + b^{'} \exp [- E_{a 2} / (k_{B} T)]}$ , where $a^{'}$ and $b^{'}$ are free parameters and $E_{a 2} = 24 \pm 3 meV$ is the activation energy. The dotted line for the G data is a guide for the eye.
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