Fabrication and Detection of Silicon Carbide Color Centers Based on Nanosecond Laser Technology

With the rapid development of NV* color centers in silicon carbide, as a new candidate for quantum technologies, have attracted increasing attention in the past ten years. To date, there are three methods of fabricating color centers in silicon carbide: ion injection, electronic irradiation, and femtosecond laser writing. Notably, these methods are too expensive for application. In this work, we use a laser writing method to produce color centers in 4H-SiC, employing a nanosecond laser. The 4H-SiC is placed on a steady optical platform, different powers (from 30 to 100 W) of the laser are used to illuminate the 4H-SiC, and a special array of color centers is produced on different pieces of the 4H-SiC with a size of 4×4 mm. Around the array, several optically-detected color centers appear. The fabricated color centers are optically characterized by confocal imaging with a 532 nm excitation at room temperature. The fluorescence spectra certainly show that the color centers are successfully produced. The Raman spectrum shows approximately 2,000 counts of the color center ensemble. The method clearly results in fabricated silicon vacancy color centers that can emit in both ranges of 850 – 950 nm and 650 – 750 nm. This technique can be used to engineer color centers in SiC for the single-photon generation, sensing, display fabrication, and light emitting diodes.