1. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA
2. Theoretical Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA
3. Department of Electrical Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90095-1594, USA

Correspondence to: H. W. Jiang¹ Email: jiangh@physics.ucla.edu

Abstract

The ability to manipulate and monitor a single-electron spin using electron spin resonance is a long-sought goal. Such control would be invaluable for nanoscopic spin electronics, quantum information processing using individual electron spin qubits and magnetic resonance imaging of single molecules. There have been several examples^{1, 2} of magnetic resonance detection of a single-electron spin in solids. Spin resonance of a nitrogen-vacancy defect centre in diamond has been detected optically³, and spin precession of a localized electron spin on a surface was detected^{4, 5} using scanning tunnelling microscopy. Spins in semiconductors are particularly attractive for study because of their very long decoherence times⁶. Here we demonstrate electrical sensing of the magnetic resonance spin-flips of a single electron paramagnetic spin centre, formed by a defect in the gate oxide of a standard silicon transistor. The spin orientation is converted to electric charge, which we measure as a change in the source/drain channel current. Our set-up may facilitate the direct study of the physics of spin decoherence, and has the practical advantage of being composed of test transistors in a conventional, commercial, silicon integrated circuit. It is well known from the rich literature of magnetic resonance studies that there sometimes exist structural paramagnetic defects⁷ near the Si/SiO₂ interface. For a small transistor, there might be only one isolated trap state that is within a tunnelling distance of the channel, and that has a charging energy close to the Fermi level.

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