Issue

Vol. 13 (2021)

Single-Photon Sources Based on Novel Color Centers in Silicon Carbide P–I–N Diodes: Combining Theory and Experiment

https://doi.org/10.1007/s40820-021-00600-y
Igor A. Khramtsov
Laboratory of Nanooptics and Plasmonics, Center for Photonics and 2D Materials, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, 141700, Dolgoprudny, Russian Federation
Dmitry Yu. Fedyanin
Laboratory of Nanooptics and Plasmonics, Center for Photonics and 2D Materials, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, 141700, Dolgoprudny, Russian Federation

Corresponding Author: Dmitry Yu. Fedyanin

dmitry.fedyanin@phystech.edu

Nano-Micro Letters, Vol. 13 (2021), Article Number: 83

Abstract

Point defects in the crystal lattice of SiC, known as color centers, have recently emerged as one of the most promising single-photon emitters for non-classical light sources. However, the search for the best color center that satisfies all the requirements of practical applications has only just begun. Many color centers in SiC have been recently discovered but not yet identified. Therefore, it is extremely challenging to understand their optoelectronic properties and evaluate their potential for use in practical single-photon sources. Here, we present a theoretical approach that explains the experiments on single-photon electroluminescence (SPEL) of novel color centers in SiC p–i–n diodes and gives the possibility to engineer highly efficient single-photon emitting diodes based on them. Moreover, we develop a novel method of determining the electron and hole capture cross sections by the color center from experimental measurements of the SPEL rate and second-order coherence. Unlike other methods, the developed approach uses the experimental results at the single defect level that can be easily obtained as soon as a single-color center is identified in the i-type region of the SiC p–i–n diode.


Highlights:


1 Theory of electrically driven single-photon sources based on color centers in silicon carbide p–i–n diodes.
2 New method of determining the electron and hole capture cross sections by an optically active point defect (color center) from the experimental measurements of the single-photon electroluminescence rate and second-order coherence.
3 The developed method is based on the measurements at the single defect level. Therefore, in contrast to other approaches, one point defect is sufficient to measure its electron and hole capture cross sections.

Keywords

Color centers Electron capture cross section Single-photon emitting diodes Single-photon electroluminescence Charge state control
Khramtsov, Igor A., and Dmitry Yu. Fedyanin. 2021. “Single-Photon Sources Based on Novel Color Centers in Silicon Carbide P–I–N Diodes: Combining Theory and Experiment”. Nano-Micro Letters 13 (March):83. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40820-021-00600-y.
Download Citation
Endnote/Zotero/Mendeley (RIS)
BibTeX
References
  1. R. Bedington, J.M. Arrazola, A. Ling, Progress in satellite quantum key distribution. npj Quantum Inf. 3, 30 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41534-017-0031-5
  2. J. Yin, Y.-H. Li, S.-K. Liao, M. Yang, Y. Cao et al., Entanglement-based secure quantum cryptography over 1,120 kilometres. Nature 582, 501–505 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2401-y
  3. P. Sibson, C. Erven, M. Godfrey, S. Miki, T. Yamashita et al., Chip-based quantum key distribution. Nat. Commun. 8, 13984 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms13984
  4. E. Diamanti, H.-K. Lo, B. Qi, Z. Yuan, Practical challenges in quantum key distribution. npj Quantum Inf. 2, 16025 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/npjqi.2016.25
  5. Q. Zhang, F. Xu, Y.-A. Chen, C.-Z. Peng, J.-W. Pan, Large scale quantum key distribution: challenges and solutions. Opt. Express. 26, 24260–24273 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1364/OE.26.024260
  6. N. Montaut, L. Sansoni, E. Meyer-Scott, R. Ricken, V. Quiring et al., High-efficiency plug-and-play source of heralded single photons. Phys. Rev. Appl. 8, 024021 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevapplied.8.024021
  7. X. Guo, C.-L. Zou, C. Schuck, H. Jung, R. Cheng et al., Parametric down-conversion photon-pair source on a nanophotonic chip. Light Sci. Appl. 6, e16249 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/lsa.2016.249
  8. L. Caspani, C. Xiong, B.J. Eggleton, D. Bajoni, M. Liscidini et al., Integrated sources of photon quantum states based on nonlinear optics. Light Sci. Appl. 6, e17100 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/lsa.2017.100
  9. M.D. Eisaman, J. Fan, A. Migdall, S.V. Polyakov, Invited review article: Single-photon sources and detectors. Rev. Sci. Instrum. 82, 071101 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3610677
  10. A. Boretti, L. Rosa, A. Mackie, S. Castelletto, Electrically driven quantum light sources. Adv. Opt. Mater. 3, 1012–1033 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1002/adom.201500022
  11. S. Buckley, K. Rivoire, J. Vučković, Engineered quantum dot single-photon sources. Rep. Prog. Phys. 75, 126503 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1088/0034-4885/75/12/126503
  12. P. Senellart, G. Solomon, A. White, High-performance semiconductor quantum-dot single-photon sources. Nat. Nanotechnol. 12, 1026–1039 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2017.218
  13. S. Deshpande, T. Frost, A. Hazari, P. Bhattacharya, Electrically pumped single-photon emission at room temperature from a single InGaN/GaN quantum dot. Appl. Phys. Lett. 105, 141109 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4897640
  14. I. Aharonovich, D. Englund, M. Toth, Solid-state single-photon emitters. Nat. Photon. 10, 631–641 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2016.186
  15. S. Lagomarsino, F. Gorelli, M. Santoro, N. Fabbri, A. Hajeb et al., Robust luminescence of the silicon-vacancy center in diamond at high temperatures. AIP Adv. 5, 127117 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4938256
  16. R. Brouri, A. Beveratos, J.P. Poizat, P. Grangier, Photon antibunching in the fluorescence of individual color centers in diamond. Opt. Lett. 25, 1294–1296 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1364/ol.25.001294
  17. N. Mizuochi, T. Makino, H. Kato, D. Takeuchi, M. Ogura et al., Electrically driven single-photon source at room temperature in diamond. Nat. Photon. 6, 299–303 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2012.75
  18. A. Lohrmann, S. Pezzagna, I. Dobrinets, P. Spinicelli, V. Jacques et al., Diamond based light-emitting diode for visible single-photon emission at room temperature. Appl. Phys. Lett. 99, 251106 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3670332
  19. I.A. Khramtsov, D.Y. Fedyanin, Bright single-photon emitting diodes based on the silicon-vacancy center in AlN/diamond heterostructures. Nanomaterials 10, 361 (2020). https://doi.org/10.3390/nano10020361
  20. A. Lohrmann, B.C. Johnson, J.C. McCallum, S. Castelletto, A review on single photon sources in silicon carbide. Rep. Prog. Phys. 80, 034502 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-6633/aa5171
  21. S. Castelletto, B.C. Johnson, V. Ivády, N. Stavrias, T. Umeda et al., A silicon carbide room-temperature single-photon source. Nat. Mater. 13, 151–156 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat3806
  22. A. Lohrmann, N. Iwamoto, Z. Bodrog, S. Castelletto, T. Ohshima et al., Single-photon emitting diode in silicon carbide. Nat. Commun. 6, 7783 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms8783
  23. I.A. Khramtsov, A.A. Vyshnevyy, D.Y. Fedyanin, Enhancing the brightness of electrically driven single-photon sources using color centers in silicon carbide. npj Quantum Inf. 4, 15 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41534-018-0066-2
  24. M. Widmann, M. Niethammer, T. Makino, T. Rendler, S. Lasse et al., Bright single photon sources in lateral silicon carbide light emitting diodes. Appl. Phys. Lett. 112, 231103 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5032291
  25. S.-I. Sato, T. Honda, T. Makino, Y. Hijikata, S.-Y. Lee et al., Room temperature electrical control of single photon sources at 4H-SiC surface. ACS Photon. 5, 3159–3165 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1021/acsphotonics.8b00375
  26. F. Fuchs, V.A. Soltamov, S. Väth, P.G. Baranov, E.N. Mokhov et al., Silicon carbide light-emitting diode as a prospective room temperature source for single photons. Sci. Rep. 3, 1637 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/srep01637
  27. I.A. Khramtsov, D.Y. Fedyanin, Superinjection in diamond p–i–n diodes: bright single-photon electroluminescence of color centers beyond the doping limit. Phys. Rev. Appl. 12, 024013 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevApplied.12.024013
  28. I.A. Khramtsov, D.Y. Fedyanin, Superinjection of holes in homojunction diodes based on wide-bandgap semiconductors. Materials 12, 1972 (2019). https://doi.org/10.3390/ma12121972
  29. I.A. Khramtsov, D.Y. Fedyanin, Superinjection in diamond homojunction P–I–N diodes. Semicond. Sci. Technol. 34, 03LT03 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-6641/ab0569
  30. Y. Yan, S.-H. Wei, Doping asymmetry in wide-bandgap semiconductors: origins and solutions. Phys. Status Solidi B 245, 641–652 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1002/pssb.200743334
  31. J.H. Park, D.Y. Kim, E. Fred Schubert, J. Cho, Kim JK (2018) Fundamental limitations of wide-bandgap semiconductors for light-emitting diodes. ACS Energy Lett. 3, 655–662 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1021/acsenergylett.8b00002
  32. I.A. Khramtsov, D. Yu. Fedyanin, Superinjection in single-photon emitting diamond diodes, in 2018 International Conference on Numerical Simulation of Optoelectronic Devices (NUSOD), Hong Kong (2018), pp. 123–124. https://doi.org/10.1109/nusod.2018.8570242
  33. A.J. Shields, Semiconductor quantum light sources. Nat. Photon. 1, 215–223 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2007.46
  34. D.Y. Fedyanin, A.V. Krasavin, A.V. Arsenin, A.V. Zayats, Lasing at the nanoscale: coherent emission of surface plasmons by an electrically driven nanolaser. Nanophotonics 9, 3965–3975 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1515/nanoph-2020-0157
  35. G. Roelkens, L. Liu, D. Liang, R. Jones, A. Fang et al., III-V/silicon photonics for on-chip and intra-chip optical interconnects. Laser Photon. Rev. 4, 751–779 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1002/lpor.200900033
  36. I.A. Khramtsov, D.Y. Fedyanin, Gate-tunable single-photon emitting diode with an extremely low tuning time, in Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics, OSA Technical Digest (Optical Society of America, 2020), paper JTh2A.21. https://doi.org/10.1364/cleo_at.2020.jth2a.21
  37. D.Y. Fedyanin, I.A. Khramtsov, A.A. Vyshnevyy, Electrically driven single-photon sources based on color centers in silicon carbide: pursuing gigacount-per-second emission rates, in 2019 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics Europe & European Quantum Electronics Conference (CLEO/Europe-EQEC), Munich, Germany, 2019, pp. 1–1. https://doi.org/10.1109/cleoe-eqec.2019.8873252
  38. Q. Li, J.-Y. Zhou, Z.-H. Liu, J.-S. Xu, C.-F. Li et al., Stable single photon sources in the near C-band range above 400 K. J. Semicond. 40, 072902 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1088/1674-4926/40/7/072902
  39. J. Wang, Y. Zhou, Z. Wang, A. Rasmita, J. Yang et al., Bright room temperature single photon source at telecom range in cubic silicon carbide. Nat. Commun. 9, 4106 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-06605-3
  40. D.Y. Fedyanin, M. Agio, Ultrabright single-photon source on diamond with electrical pumping at room and high temperatures. New J. Phys. 18, 073012 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1088/1367-2630/18/7/073012
  41. I.A. Khramtsov, M. Agio, D.Y. Fedyanin, Dynamics of single-photon emission from electrically pumped color centers. Phys. Rev. Appl. 8, 024031 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevapplied.8.024031
  42. V.N. Abakumov, V.I. Perel, I.N. Yassievich, Nonradiative Recombination in Semiconductors (Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1991).
  43. A. Alkauskas, C.E. Dreyer, J.L. Lyons, C.G. Van de Walle, Role of excited states in Shockley-Read-Hall recombination in wide-band-gap semiconductors. Phys. Rev. B 93, 201304 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevb.93.201304
  44. J. Pernot, W. Zawadzki, S. Contreras, J.L. Robert, E. Neyret et al., Electrical transport in n-type 4H silicon carbide. J. Appl. Phys. 90, 1869–1878 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1063/1.1382849
  45. C. Erginsoy, Neutral impurity scattering in semiconductors. Phys. Rev. 79, 1013–1014 (1950). https://doi.org/10.1103/physrev.79.1013
  46. S.M. Sze, K.K. Ng, Physics of Semiconductor Devices (Wiley, Hoboken, 2006).
  47. T. Kimoto, J.A. Cooper, Fundamentals of Silicon Carbide Technology: Growth, Characterization, Devices and Applications (Wiley, Hoboken, 2014).
  48. I.A. Khramtsov, D.Y. Fedyanin, Toward ultrafast tuning and triggering single-photon electroluminescence of color centers in silicon carbide. ACS Appl. Electron. Mater. 1, 1859–1865 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1021/acsaelm.9b00385
  49. V. Presser, K.G. Nickel, Silica on silicon carbide. Crit. Rev. Solid State Mater. Sci. 33, 1–99 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1080/10408430701718914
  50. I.D. Booker, H. Abdalla, J. Hassan, R. Karhu, L. Lilja et al., Oxidation-induced deep levels in n- and p-type 4H- and 6H-SiC and their influence on carrier lifetime. Phys. Rev. Appl. 6, 014010 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevapplied.6.014010
  51. K. Gulbinas, V. Grivickas, H.P. Mahabadi, M. Usman, A. Hallén, Surface recombination investigation in thin 4H-SiC layers. Mater. Sci. 17, 119–124 (1970). https://doi.org/10.5755/j01.ms.17.2.479
  52. K. Bray, D.Y. Fedyanin, I.A. Khramtsov, M.O. Bilokur, B. Regan et al., Electrical excitation and charge-state conversion of silicon vacancy color centers in single-crystal diamond membranes. Appl. Phys. Lett. 116, 101103 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5139256
  53. C.P. Anderson, A. Bourassa, K.C. Miao, G. Wolfowicz, P.J. Mintun et al., Electrical and optical control of single spins integrated in scalable semiconductor devices. Science 366, 1225–1230 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aax9406
  54. D.A. Broadway, N. Dontschuk, A. Tsai, S.E. Lillie, C.T.-K. Lew et al., Spatial mapping of band bending in semiconductor devices using in situ quantum sensors. Nat. Electron. 1, 502–507 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-018-0130-0
  55. M. Widmann, M. Niethammer, D.Y. Fedyanin, I.A. Khramtsov, T. Rendler et al., Electrical charge state manipulation of single silicon vacancies in a silicon carbide quantum optoelectronic device. Nano Lett. 19, 7173–7180 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.nanolett.9b02774
  56. M. Pfender, N. Aslam, P. Simon, D. Antonov, G. Thiering et al., Protecting a diamond quantum memory by charge state control. Nano Lett. 17, 5931–5937 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.nanolett.7b01796
  57. B.J. Shields, Q.P. Unterreithmeier, N.P. de Leon, H. Park, M.D. Lukin, Efficient readout of a single spin state in diamond via spin-to-charge conversion. Phys. Rev. Lett. 114, 136402 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.114.136402
  58. I.A. Khramtsov, D.Y. Fedyanin, On-demand generation of high-purity single-photon pulses by NV centers in diamond under electrical excitation, in Frontiers in Optics / Laser Science, OSA Technical Digest, ed by B. Lee, C. Mazzali, K. Corwin, and R. Jason Jones, (Optical Society of America, 2020), paper FW4C.7. https://doi.org/10.1364/FIO.2020.FW4C.7
  59. M. Niethammer, M. Widmann, T. Rendler, N. Morioka, Y.-C. Chen et al., Coherent electrical readout of defect spins in silicon carbide by photo-ionization at ambient conditions. Nat. Commun. 10, 5569 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-13545-z
  60. P. Siyushev, M. Nesladek, E. Bourgeois, M. Gulka, J. Hruby et al., Photoelectrical imaging and coherent spin-state readout of single nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond. Science 363, 728–731 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aav2789
Read More
Author biographies are not available.
Download this PDF file
PDF
Statistic
Read Counter : 5838 Download : 4396