Nano-orbitronics in silicon

摘要

Shallow donor impurities in silicon, once frozen out at low temperature, share many properties in common with free hydrogen atoms [1]. They have long been the subject of spectroscopic investigation, but it is only very recently [2,3] that it has been possible to investigate the time-domain dynamics of orbital excitations such as the 1s to 2p, due to the difficulty of obtaining short, intense pulses in the relevant wavelength range. These new techniques make shallow donors (and also acceptors [4]) attractive for studying atomic physics effects, and for applications in quantum information. We have measured the population dynamics of electrons orbiting around phosphorus impurities in commercially-available silicon, and shown that the lattice relaxation lifetime is about 200ps, only 1 order of magnitude shorter than the radiative lifetime of free hydrogen.