title: Design of defect spins in piezoelectric aluminum nitride for solid-state hybrid quantum technologies.
abstract: Spin defects in wide-band gap semiconductors are promising systems for the realization of quantum bits, or qubits, in solid-state environments. To date, defect qubits have only been realized in materials with strong covalent bonds. Here, we introduce a strain-driven scheme to rationally design defect spins in functional ionic crystals, which may operate as potential qubits. In particular, using a combination of state-of-the-art ab-initio calculations based on hybrid density functional and many-body perturbation theory, we predicted that the negatively charged nitrogen vacancy center in piezoelectric aluminum nitride exhibits spin-triplet ground states under realistic uni- and bi-axial strain conditions; such states may be harnessed for the realization of qubits. The strain-driven strategy adopted here can be readily extended to a wide range of point defects in other wide-band gap semiconductors, paving the way to controlling the spin properties of defects in ionic systems for potential spintronic technologies.
authors.affiliation: The Institute for Molecular Engineering, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.
authors.forename: Hosung
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Seo
authors.affiliation: The Institute for Molecular Engineering, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.|Materials Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL, USA.
authors.forename: Marco
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Govoni
authors.affiliation: The Institute for Molecular Engineering, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.|Materials Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL, USA.
authors.forename: Giulia
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Galli