Deterministic creation of strained color centers in nanostructures via high-stress thin films

Creators: Assumpcao, D. R.; Jin, C.; Sutula, M.; Ding, S. W.; Pham, P.; Knaut, C. M.; Bhaskar, M. K.; Panday, A.; Day, A. M.; Renaud, D.; Lukin, M. D.; Hu, E.; Machielse, B.; Loncar, M.

Abstract

Color centers have emerged as a leading qubit candidate for realizing hybrid spin-photon quantum information technology. One major limitation of the platform, however, is that the characteristics of individual color centers are often strain dependent. As an illustrative case, the silicon-vacancy center in diamond typically requires millikelvin temperatures in order to achieve long coherence properties, but strained silicon-vacancy centers have been shown to operate at temperatures beyond 1 K without phonon-mediated decoherence. In this work, we combine high-stress silicon-nitride thin films with diamond nanostructures to reproducibly create statically strained silicon-vacancy color centers (mean ground state splitting of 608 GHz) with strain magnitudes of ∼4×10⁻⁴. Based on modeling, this strain should be sufficient to allow for operation of a majority silicon-vacancy centers within the measured sample at elevated temperatures (1.5 K) without any degradation of their spin properties. This method offers a scalable approach to fabricate high-temperature operation quantum memories. Beyond silicon-vacancy centers, this method is sufficiently general that it can be easily extended to other platforms as well.

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Acknowledgement

This work was supported by AWS Center for Quantum Networking's research alliance with the Harvard Quantum Initiative, Nos. NSF OMA-2137723, EEC-1941583, ONR N00014-20-1-2425, and ARO MURI W911NF1810432. D.R. and D.A. acknowledge support from the NSF GRFP (No. DGE1745303). M.S. acknowledges support from the NASA Space Technology Graduate Research Fellowship Program. D.R. acknowledges support from the Ford Foundation fellowship. P.P. acknowledges support from the Caltech Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships program. Device fabrication was performed at the Center for Nanoscale Systems (CNS), a member of the National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure Network (NNCI), which is supported by the National Science Foundation under NSF Grant No. 1541959.

Contributions

Daniel Rimoli Assumpcao: Data curation (equal); Formal analysis (equal); Investigation (equal); Methodology (equal). Chang Jin: Investigation (equal). Madison Sutula: Formal analysis (supporting); Investigation (equal). Sophie Weiyi Ding: Investigation (supporting). Phuong Pham: Investigation (supporting). Can Mithat Knaut: Investigation (supporting). Mihir Bhaskar: Investigation (supporting). Abishrant Panday: Investigation (supporting). Aaron Day: Investigation (supporting). Dylan Renaud: Investigation (supporting); Visualization (equal). Mikhail D. Lukin: Funding acquisition (supporting). Evelyn L. Hu: Funding acquisition (supporting); Supervision (supporting). Bart Machielse: Methodology (equal); Supervision (lead). Marko Loncar: Funding acquisition (equal); Project administration (equal); Supervision (equal).

Data Availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

See the supplementary material for a comparison of SiV transition distributions on the base and on the cantilever proper.

Conflict of Interest

The authors have no conflicts to disclose.

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Embargoed

The files will be made publicly available on December 11, 2024.

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Resource type: Journal Article
Publisher: AIP Publishing
Published in: Applied Physics Letters, 123(24), 244001, ISSN: 0003-6951.
Languages: English