Impact of Surface Treatment on Noise in PL-Measurements of Silicon Vacancies in 4H-SiC Lateral pin-Diodes
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Quantum Physics arXiv:2605.24157 (quant-ph) [Submitted on 22 May 2026] Title:Impact of Surface Treatment on Noise in PL-Measurements of Silicon Vacancies in 4H-SiC Lateral pin-Diodes Authors:Jannik H. Schwarberg (1), Fabian Magerl (1), Susanne Beuer (2), Alexander May (2), Christian Gobert (2), Martin Siebert (3), Christian Miersch (3), Heino Möller (4), Wolfgang Knolle (5), Chihang Luo (6), Jan F. Dick (1 and 2), Franziska C. Beyer (3), Mathias Rommel (2), Jörg Schulze (1 and 2) ((1) Chair of Electron Devices at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, (2) Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Systems and Devices Technology, (3) Department of Energy Materials and Test Devices at Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Systems and Device Technology, (4) Intego GmbH, (5) Leibniz-Institut für Oberflächenmodifizierung, (6) Department of Modern Physics, University of Science and Technology of China) View a PDF of the paper titled Impact of Surface Treatment on Noise in PL-Measurements of Silicon Vacancies in 4H-SiC Lateral pin-Diodes, by Jannik H. Schwarberg (1) and 19 other authors View PDF Abstract:Silicon vacancies ($V_\mathrm{Si}$) in 4H-SiC are promising candidates for quantum technologies due to their long spin coherence times and integrability into mature semiconductor platforms. However, conventional CMOS-compatible processing introduces significant photoluminescence noise from passivation layers and crystal damage, degrading color center coherence and excitation linewidths. This work evaluates strategies to minimize such background noise. Thermally grown oxides with nitrogen monoxide annealing provide excellent low-noise passivation, remaining stable during subsequent $600\,^{\circ}\mathrm{C}$ thermal treatments. Furthermore, combining reactive ion etching with atomic layer etching eliminates ion-induced surface damage. Into lateral pin-diodes, used for stark shift and photoluminescent excitation linewidth tuning, a selectively etched optical window is integrated. These devices show ideal electrical properties -- blocking up to $150\,\mathrm{V}$ with leakage current below $10\,\mathrm{pA}/\mu\mathrm{m}$ -- while significantly enhancing the $V_\mathrm{Si}$ environment. Single emitters in these pin-diodes show an increased signal-to-noise ratio of 15 for near-surface and of 50 for deeper emitters on both c-plane and a-plane wafers. Comments: Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph) Cite as: arXiv:2605.24157 [quant-ph] (or arXiv:2605.24157v1 [quant-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2605.24157 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration) Related DOI: https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.nanolett.6c00646 Focus to learn more DOI(s) linking to related resources Submission history From: Jannik Hermann Schwarberg [view email] [v1] Fri, 22 May 2026 19:24:39 UTC (2,597 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled Impact of Surface Treatment on Noise in PL-Measurements of Silicon Vacancies in 4H-SiC Lateral pin-Diodes, by Jannik H. Schwarberg (1) and 19 other authorsView PDF view license Current browse context: quant-ph new | recent | 2026-05 References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADSGoogle Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Loading... BibTeX formatted citation × loading... Data provided by: Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub (What is DagsHub?) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate (What is Replicate?) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender (What is CORE?) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs. Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)