Single Donor Spins Research Articles

Deterministic Shallow Dopant Implantation in Silicon with Detection Confidence Upper-Bound to 99.85% by Ion-Solid Interactions.

Silicon chips containing arrays of single dopant atoms can be the material of choice for classical and quantum devices that exploit single donor spins. For example, group-V donors implanted in isotopically purified 28 Si crystals are attractive for large-scale quantum computers. Useful attributes include long nuclear and electron spin lifetimes of 31 P, hyperfine clock transitions in 209 Bi or electrically controllable 123 Sb nuclear spins. Promising architectures require the ability to fabricate arrays of individual near-surface dopant atoms with high yield. Here, an on-chip detector electrode system with 70eV root-mean-square noise (≈20 electrons) is employed to demonstrate near-room-temperature implantation of single 14keV 31 P+ ions. The physics model for the ion-solid interaction shows an unprecedented upper-bound single-ion-detection confidence of 99.85 ± 0.02% for near-surface implants. As a result, the practical controlled silicon doping yield is limited by materials engineering factors including surface gate oxides in which detected ions may stop. For a device with 6nm gate oxide and 14keV 31 P+ implants, a yield limit of 98.1% is demonstrated. Thinner gate oxides allow this limit to converge to the upper-bound. Deterministic single-ion implantation can therefore be a viable materials engineering strategy for scalable dopant architectures in silicon devices.

Quantum nondemolition measurements of single donor spins in semiconductors

We propose a technique for measuring the state of a single donor-electron spin using a field-effect transistor induced two-dimensional electron gas and electrically detected magnetic-resonance techniques. The scheme is facilitated by hyperfine coupling to the donor nucleus. We analyze the potential sensitivity and outline experimental requirements. Our measurement provides a single-shot, projective, and quantum nondemolition measurement of an electron-encoded qubit state.

High Precision Quantum Control of Single Donor Spins in Silicon

The Stark shift of the hyperfine coupling constant is investigated for a P donor in Si far below the ionization regime in the presence of interfaces using tight-binding and band minima basis approaches and compared to the recent precision measurements. In contrast with previous effective mass-based results, the quadratic Stark coefficient obtained from both theories agrees closely with the experiments. It is also shown that there is a significant linear Stark effect for an impurity near the interface, whereas, far from the interface, the quadratic Stark effect dominates. This work represents the most sensitive and precise comparison between theory and experiment for single donor spin control. Such precise control of single donor spin states is required particularly in quantum computing applications of single donor electronics, which forms the driving motivation of this work.

Electrically detected magnetic resonance in ion-implanted Si:P nanostructures

The authors present the results of electrically detected magnetic resonance (EDMR) experiments on ion-implanted Si:P nanostructures at 5K, consisting of high-dose implanted metallic leads with a square gap, in which phosphorus is implanted at a nonmetallic dose corresponding to 1017cm−3. By restricting this secondary implant to a 100×100nm2 region, the EDMR signal from less than 100 donors is detected. This technique provides a pathway to the study of single donor spins in semiconductors, which is relevant to a number of proposals for quantum information processing.