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A silicon carbide room-temperature single-photon source

Abstract

Over the past few years, single-photon generation has been realized in numerous systems: single molecules1, quantum dots2,3,4, diamond colour centres5 and others6. The generation and detection of single photons play a central role in the experimental foundation of quantum mechanics7 and measurement theory8. An efficient and high-quality single-photon source is needed to implement quantum key distribution, quantum repeaters and photonic quantum information processing9. Here we report the identification and formation of ultrabright, room-temperature, photostable single-photon sources in a device-friendly material, silicon carbide (SiC). The source is composed of an intrinsic defect, known as the carbon antisite–vacancy pair, created by carefully optimized electron irradiation and annealing of ultrapure SiC. An extreme brightness (2×106 counts s−1) resulting from polarization rules and a high quantum efficiency is obtained in the bulk without resorting to the use of a cavity or plasmonic structure. This may benefit future integrated quantum photonic devices9.

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Figure 1: Ensemble measurements of defects in electron-irradiated 4H-SiC.
Figure 2: Confocal microscopy of single-defect localization in 4H-SiC.
Figure 3: Photo-stability of single-photon sources in SiC.

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Acknowledgements

S.C. acknowledges partial financial support from the Australian Research Council, Centre of Excellence Engineered Quantum Systems (CE110001013). B.C.J. acknowledges financial support from the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS; Grant-in-aid for Scientific Research, 22.00802) and the Australian Research Council Centre for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology (CE110001027). This study is also partially supported by the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture, Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research, 2012, 24656025. A.G. acknowledges the EU FP7 Grant No. 270197 (DIAMANT), the Hungarian OTKA Grant Nos K101819 and K106114 and the support from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation.

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Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

S.C. and B.C.J. proposed the idea and the strategy for the experimental design and data analysis and wrote the paper. S.C. performed the optical single-photon characterization experiments. B.C.J. irradiated and annealed the samples and made the low-temperature photoluminescence measurements. N.S. performed some of the low-temperature photoluminescence measurements. S.C. and B.C.J. coordinated the experiments and analysed the data. V.I. and A.G. performed the theoretical model of the centre. S.C., B.C.J. and A.G. contributed to writing the manuscript. All authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.

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Correspondence to S. Castelletto.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Castelletto, S., Johnson, B., Ivády, V. et al. A silicon carbide room-temperature single-photon source. Nature Mater 13, 151–156 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat3806

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