Zeeman spectroscopy of the neutral silicon vacancy in 6H and 4H SiC

• High-resolution photoluminescence (PL) and PL excitation (PLE) spectroscopy has been employed to reveal the electronic structure of the neutral silicon vacancy in 6H and 4H SiC. The defect gives rise to characteristic PL emissions with three no-phonon lines in 6H SiC and two in 4H SiC at around 1.4 eV. All of the no-phonon lines are shown to arise from transitions between singlet (S=0) excited states and singlet ground states. Nevertheless, optically detected magnetic resonance (ODMR) signals typical for a spin triplet (S=1) configuration can be obtained when monitoring the emission under resonant excitation. This observation can be explained by non-radiative recombination via a lower lying excited triplet state. In strained samples all no-phonon PL lines are split into a series of lines. For the highest energy lines the main splitting can be attributed to lifting of the orbital degeneracy of the excited states, the additional broadening or splitting is probably due to a strain distribution in the samples.

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