Coherent control and high-fidelity readout of chromium ions in commercial silicon carbide

Understand

Transition metal ions provide a rich set of optically active defect spins in wide bandgap semiconductors.

• Chromium (Cr4+) in silicon-carbide (SiC) produces a spin-1 ground state with a narrow, spectrally isolated, spin-selective, near-telecom optical interface.
• However, previous studies were hindered by material quality resulting in limited coherent control.
• In this work, we implant Cr into commercial 4H-SiC and show optimal defect activation after annealing above 1600 C.