• Accepted Paper

Electron spin relaxation and coherence times of silicon vacancies in 4H-SiC

Irene Donà, Michele Segantini, Gianluca Marcozzi, Nguyen Tien Son, Takeshi Ohshima, Ha Duong Ngo, and Boris Naydenov

Phys. Rev. B - Accepted 9 October, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/bg36-b6bs

Abstract

Color defect centers carrying electron spins in solid crystals like diamond and silicon carbide (SiC) are promising candidates for qubits and quantum sensors, with SiC material being particularly interesting due to its compatibility with the existing semiconductor technology. Here we investigated the electron spin properties of silicon vacancy centers (V1 and V2) both electron spin S=3/2 in 4H-SiC in the temperature range T=80−300~K using electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR). The EPR spectrum shows central and satellite lines, where the former ones originate from V1 and V2 centers, as well as from unknown defect center X. The analysis of continuous wave EPR measurements revealed a spin concentration of cV1=1.47±0.3×1014, cV2=5.6±1.12×1013 and cX=1.03±0.21×1013 spins/cm3. Additionally, electron spin coherence T2 and relaxation times T1 have been measured on the central and on the satellite spectral lines, resulting in longer T1 and T2 for the satellite transition, compared to the central one, with maximum values of 42.8±1.3~ms and 0.708±0.004~ms respectively at T=80~K. We reveal, that decoherence is mainly caused by nuclear and electron spin diffusion.

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