Color Centers Enabled by Direct Femto-Second Laser Writing in Wide Bandgap Semiconductors

Abstract

Color centers in silicon carbide are relevant for applications in quantum technologies as they can produce single photon sources or can be used as spin qubits and in quantum sensing applications. Here, we have applied femtosecond laser writing in silicon carbide and gallium nitride to generate vacancy-related color centers, giving rise to photoluminescence from the visible to the infrared. Using a 515 nm wavelength 230 fs pulsed laser, we produce large arrays of silicon vacancy defects in silicon carbide with a high localization within the confocal diffraction limit of 500 nm and with minimal material damage. The number of color centers formed exhibited power-law scaling with the laser fabrication energy indicating that the color centers are created by photoinduced ionization. This work highlights the simplicity and flexibility of laser fabrication of color center arrays in relevant materials for quantum applications.

Laser Writing of Color Centers

“…[44,125] Recently, Castelletto et al has utilized laser-writing to create vacancy-related color centers in silicon carbon with minimal damage to the material lattice. [126] Chen et al reported that a single silicon-vacancy (V Si ) center created by laser-writing exhibits stable PL emission, high single-photon purity, and high positioning accuracy of about 80 nm, which is sufficient for integration with optical-electrical devices. [127] In addition, the DLW has been extended to create fluorescent defects in other wide bandgap materials such as gallium nitride and cubic boron nitride.…”

“…has utilized laser‐writing to create vacancy‐related color centers in silicon carbon with minimal damage to the material lattice. [ 126 ] Chen et al. reported that a single silicon‐vacancy (V Si ) center created by laser‐writing exhibits stable PL emission, high single‐photon purity, and high positioning accuracy of about 80 nm, which is sufficient for integration with optical‐electrical devices.…”

High-power modelocked thin-disk oscillators as potential technology for high-rate material processing

“…In fact, many materials exhibit lower ablation thresholds at shorter wavelengths as a result of typically higher linear and nonlinear absorption coefficients. Together with a better focusability, a larger variety of materials can be processed more efficiently for example metal [ 30 , 31 ], glasses [ 32 , 33 ], ceramics, thin films [ 34 ] and semiconductors [ 35 ].…”

Designing of DAD Type Small Semiconductor Molecules andInvestigation of Substituent Effect on Their Molecular, Electronic and Optical Properties: A DFT Study**

“…Small molecule semiconductors have attracted great interest due to their well-defined chemical structures, easy purifications, electronic and optical properties, and overcoming the batch-tobatch variation problems. [1][2][3] Lots of small molecules have already been studied in the field of organic photovoltaics, [4][5][6][7][8][9] photocatalytic water splitting, [10] transistors, [11][12][13] organic light emitting diodes, [14] fluorescent probes, [15,16] biosensors, [17] solar cells, [18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29] laser writing [30] and nanomedicine [31] as alternatives to conventional semiconductors. Organic small molecules have also been used as electron and hole transporting materials (ETMs and HTMs) in perovskite solar cells, [32][33][34] which has high energy conversion efficiencies (19 % higher), [34,35] and in electrochemical biosensors.…”