Readout schemes for phosphorous donor electron and nuclei in silicon

Phosphorous exists only as a single isotope ³¹P with a nuclear spin I=1/2. Built as donor impurity into a crystalline silicon host environment, it forms a localized single electron donor state. Both the ³¹P nucleus and the donor electron have extremely long coherence times which is why they have been proposed as spin quantum information carriers (qubits) but also as classical bits for spin memory and spin electronic applications.

Our work is concerned with the investigation of electrical single electron or nuclear spin measurement concepts as the implementation of the so far hypothetical ³¹P based spin technologies will require reliable microscopic readout procedures for individual spins in order to the retrieve spin information stored in the ³¹P spin memory.

Sketches of (a) the band diagram and (b) the geometry of gate controlled ³¹P readout devices.

Plot of the electrical current change along the interface of a ³¹P doped monocrystalline silicon sample to a silicon dioxide layer as a function of time and magnetic field after a coherent very short microwave excitation at t=0.

Our recent results on this topic:

G. W. Morley*, D. R. McCamey, H. A. Seipel, L.-C. Brunel, J. van Tol, C. Boehme*
Long spin coherence in silicon with an electrical spin trap readout
Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 207602 (2008),
also on arXiv:cond-mat/0806.3431 (2008). http://lanl.arxiv.org/abs/0806.3431

D. R. McCamey*, G. W. Morley, H. A. Seipel, L. C. Brunel, J. van Tol and C. Boehme*
Spin–dependent processes at the crystalline Si-SiO₂ interface at high magnetic fields
Phys. Rev. B, 78, 045302 (2008). http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.78.045303

also on Virtual Journal of Quantum Information 8 (7) (2008).

A. R. Stegner*, C. Boehme*, H. Huebl, M. Stutzmann, K. Lips, M. S. Brandt,
Electrical detection of ³¹P spin quantum states, Nature Physics 2, 835 (2006). http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nphys465
also on arXiv – quant-ph: 0607178 (2006). http://lanl.arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0607178

Principal Investigator: Christoph Boehme, Department of Physics, University of Utah,
115 S 1400 E, Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0830, phone 801.581.6806 • fax 801.581.4801,
email: boehme@physics.utah.edu see the University of Utah content disclaimer