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Spin blockade and exchange in Coulomb-confined silicon double quantum dots

Nature Nanotechnology volume 9, pages 430–435 (2014)Cite this article

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Abstract

Electron spins confined to phosphorus donors in silicon are promising candidates as qubits1 because of their long coherence times, exceeding seconds in isotopically purified bulk silicon2. With the recent demonstrations of initialization, readout3 and coherent manipulation4 of individual donor electron spins, the next challenge towards the realization of a Si:P donor-based quantum computer is the demonstration of exchange coupling1,5,6 in two tunnel-coupled phosphorus donors. Spin-to-charge conversion3,7 via Pauli spin blockade8,9, an essential ingredient for reading out individual spin states, is challenging in donor-based systems due to the inherently large donor charging energies (∼45 meV), requiring large electric fields (>1 MV m–1) to transfer both electron spins onto the same donor10. Here, in a carefully characterized double donor-dot device, we directly observe spin blockade of the first few electrons and measure the effective exchange interaction between electron spins in coupled Coulomb-confined systems.

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Figure 1: A few-donor double quantum dot.
Figure 2: Spectroscopy of a donor-based few-electron double quantum dot.
Figure 3: Comparison of measured binding energy spectra of few-donor double quantum dots with self-consistent atomistic TB calculations.
Figure 4: Observation of spin blockade.

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Acknowledgements

This research was conducted by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology (project no. CE110001027) and the US National Security Agency and US Army Research Office (contract no. W911NF-08-1-0527). Computational resources on nanoHUB.org, funded by the National Science Foundation (grant no. EEC-0228390), were used extensively. M.Y.S. acknowledges an ARC Laureate Fellowship.

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Author notes

  1. Suddhasatta Mahapatra

    Present address: Present address: Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Powai, Mumbai 400076, India,

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology, School of Physics, University of New South Wales, Sydney, 2052, New South Wales, Australia

    Bent Weber, Suddhasatta Mahapatra, Thomas F. Watson & Michelle Y. Simmons

  2. Network for Computational Nanotechnology, Birck Nanotechnology Center, Purdue University, 1205 West State Street, West Lafayette, 47907, Indiana, USA

    Y. H. Matthias Tan, Rajib Rahman & Gerhard Klimeck

  3. National Institute of Supercomputing and Networking, Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information, 245 Daehak-ro, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon 305–806, South Korea

    Hoon Ryu

  4. Centre for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology, School of Physics, University of Melbourne, Parkville, 3010, Victoria, Australia

    Lloyd C. L. Hollenberg

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  1. Bent Weber
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Contributions

B.W. and T.F.W. carried out the fabrication. B.W. performed measurements. B.W., Y.H.M.T., S.M., T.F.W., H.R., R.R., L.H., G.K. and M.Y.S. analysed the data. Y.H.M.T., H.R. and R.R. carried out the calculations. M.Y.S. planned the project. G.K. planned the theoretical modelling approach. B.W. and M.Y.S. prepared the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Michelle Y. Simmons.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Weber, B., Tan, Y., Mahapatra, S. et al. Spin blockade and exchange in Coulomb-confined silicon double quantum dots. Nature Nanotech 9, 430–435 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2014.63

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