Room-temperature near-infrared silicon carbide nanocrystalline emitters based on optically aligned spin defects

Abstract

Bulk silicon carbide (SiC) is a very promising material system for bio-applications and quantum sensing. However, its optical activity lies beyond the near infrared spectral window for in-vivo imaging and fiber communications due to a large forbidden energy gap. Here, we report the fabrication of SiC nanocrystals and isolation of different nanocrystal fractions ranged from 600 nm down to 60 nm in size. The structural analysis reveals further fragmentation of the smallest nanocrystals into ca. 10-nm-size clusters of high crystalline quality, separated by amorphization areas. We use neutron irradiation to create silicon vacancies, demonstrating near infrared photoluminescence. Finally, we detect, for the first time, room-temperature spin resonances of these silicon vacancies hosted in SiC nanocrystals. This opens intriguing perspectives to use them not only as in-vivo luminescent markers, but also as magnetic field and temperature sensors, allowing for monitoring various physical, chemical and biological processes.

5 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Magnetic field and temperature sensing with atomic-scale spin defects in silicon carbide
• Resonant addressing and manipulation of silicon vacancy qubits in silicon carbide
• Electron spin resonance of nitrogen-vacancy centers in optically trapped nanodiamonds
• Intrinsic defects in silicon carbide LED as a perspective room temperature single photon source in near infrared
• Excitation and recombination dynamics of vacancy-related spin centers in silicon carbide

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Engineering near infrared single photon emitters in ultrapure silicon carbide
• Optical polarization of nuclear spins in silicon carbide
• Optical thermometry based on level anticrossing in silicon carbide
• Strain modulation of Si vacancy emission from SiC micro- and nanoparticles
• Ultralong-term high-density data storage with atomic defects in SiC
• Nuclear spin polarization in silicon carbide at room temperature in the Earth's magnetic field