Abstract
High-contrast optically detected magnetic resonance is a valuable property for reading out the spin of isolated defect colour centres at room temperature. Spin-active single defect centres have been studied in wide bandgap materials including diamond, SiC and hexagonal boron nitride, each with associated advantages for applications. We report the discovery of optically detected magnetic resonance in two distinct species of bright, isolated defect centres hosted in GaN. In one group, we find negative optically detected magnetic resonance of a few percent associated with a metastable electronic state, whereas in the other, we find positive optically detected magnetic resonance of up to 30% associated with the ground and optically excited electronic states. We examine the spin symmetry axis of each defect species and establish coherent control over a single defect’s ground-state spin. Given the maturity of the semiconductor host, these results are promising for scalable and integrated quantum sensing applications.
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Data availability
All data are available on eCommons: Digital Repository at Cornell (https://doi.org/10.7298/azf0-hc03). Source data are provided with this paper.
Code availability
All codes for analysing data in this study are available on eCommons: Digital Repository at Cornell (https://doi.org/10.7298/azf0-hc03).
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Acknowledgements
We thank L. van Deurzen, D. Jena and H. G. Xing for useful discussions and for supplying the GaN substrates. We thank B. McCullian, N. Mathur, A. D’Addario and J. Kuan for helpful discussions on the physics and microwave experiments. This work was supported by the Cornell Center for Materials Research (CCMR), a National Science Foundation (NSF) Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (DMR-1719875; J.L., Y.G., F.R. and G.D.F.). We also acknowledge support through the Cornell Engineering Sprout programme (J.L.). Preliminary work was supported by the NSF TAQS programme (ECCS-1839196; J.L., Y.G., F.R. and G.D.F.). This work was performed in part at the Cornell NanoScale Science & Technology Facility (CNF), a member of the National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure (NNCI), which is supported by the NSF (grant NNCI-2025233).
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All authors conceived the experiment. J.L. and G.D.F. developed the experimental approach. J.L. and Y.G. prepared samples. J.L. made measurements. J.L. and G.D.F. analysed the experiment. J.L. and G.D.F. wrote the paper. All authors reviewed the paper.
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Supplementary Figs. 1–9, Discussion and Tables 1 and 2.
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Source Data Fig. 3
Source data for Fig. 3a,b (cw-ODMR as a function of microwave drive frequency and magnetic field).
Source Data Fig. 5
Unnormalized source data for Fig. 5b–d (Rabi oscillations for the lower-frequency, intermediate-frequency and higher-frequency spin resonances of defect no. 6).
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Luo, J., Geng, Y., Rana, F. et al. Room temperature optically detected magnetic resonance of single spins in GaN. Nat. Mater. 23, 512–518 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-024-01803-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-024-01803-5
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