We report the first observation of stable single photon sources in silicon carbide (SiC). These sources are extremely bright and operate at room temperature demonstrating that SiC is a viable material in which to realize various quantum information, computation and photonic applications. The maximum single photon count rate detected is 700k counts/s with an inferred quantum efficiency around 70%. The single photon sources are due to intrinsic deep level defects constituted of carbon antisite-vacancy pairs. These are shown to be formed controllably by electron irradiation. The variability of the temporal kinetics of these single defects is investigated in detail.
@article{arxiv.1210.5047,
title = {Efficiently Engineered Room Temperature Single Photons in Silicon Carbide},
author = {S. Castelletto and B. C. Johnson and N. Stavrias and T. Umeda and T. Ohshima},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1210.5047},
year = {2012}
}