Developing fabrication process recipe for deterministic creation of telecom color centers in commercial SOI wafers

Silicon has several features that make it an attractive platform for implementing quantum large scale quantum computing and/or network system. The unique combination of a mature fabrication technology, extraordinarily long coherence times and high control fidelities of donor spins in isotopically purified silicon have made them good candidates for realising spin based quantum bits. Realising an efficient spinphoton interface in silicon has the potential to add additional benefits including optical readout, interconnection and even entanglement generation for silicon color center qubits. Such a color center based spin photon interface in silicon can provide the missing piece of puzzle to implement large scale, on-chip qubit couplings and construct useful quantum computer, network systems.

Recently, several color centers in silicon, such as the C, G, W and T centers, have attracted significant attention for their potential as optically accessible spin qubits and/or single photon sources [1-5]. These color centers can open promising routes to implement quantum photonic integrated circuits (QuPIC) where thousands of qubits, deterministic photon sources, reconfigurable photonic components, and single-photon detectors will be effectively integrated on the same silicon chip. However, for scalable implementation of such a quantum photonic integrated circuit (QuPIC), isolation and controlled creation of single color centers at predefined locations in silicon wafers are essential.

In this project, we aim to research and develop a scalable and high yield implantation protocol to fabricate single telecom emitters at desired positions with nanoscale accuracy in commercially available silicon-oninsulator (SOI) wafers. The outcomes of this work can unlock a clear and easily exploitable pathway for realizing an optically accessible, connected and long-living color centers in silicon where the scalability of qubits may be achieved by CMOS-compatible photonic integration technology.

[1]. Michael Hollenbach, and et al., Wafer-scale nanofabrication of telecom single-photon emitters in silicon. Nat Commun 13, 7683 (2022).
[2]. Péter Udvarhelyi, and et al., An L-band emitter with quantum memory in silicon. npj Comput Mater 8, 262 (2022).
[3]. Lantian Feng, and et al., Silicon photonic devices for scalable quantum information applications, Photon. Res. 10, A135-A153 (2022)
[4]. Daniel B. Higginbottom, and et al., Optical observation of single spins in silicon. Nature 607, 266–270 (2022).
[5]. Yoann Baron, and et al., Single G centers in silicon fabricated by co-implantation with carbon and proton, Appl. Phys. Lett. 121, 084003 (2022)
[6]. Mario Khoury and Marco Abbarchi , A bright future for silicon in quantum technologies, Journal of Applied Physics 131, 200901 (2022)
[7] Alexander Kurkjian, Confocal microscopy for T centres in silicon, PhD Thesis, SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY, 2020