Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Donor electron spins in semiconductors make exceptional qubits because of their long coherence times and compatibility with industrial fabrication techniques. Despite many advances in donor-based qubit technology, it remains difficult to selectively manipulate single-donor electron spins. Here, we show that by replacing the prevailing semiconductor host material (silicon) with germanium, donor electron spin qubits can be electrically tuned by more than an ensemble linewidth, making them compatible with gate-addressable quantum computing architectures. Using X-band pulsed electron spin resonance, we measured the Stark effect for donor electron spins in germanium. We resolved both spin-orbit and hyperfine Stark shifts and found that at 0.4 T, the spin-orbit Stark shift dominates. The spin-orbit Stark shift is highly anisotropic, depending on the electric field orientation relative to the crystal axes and external magnetic field. When the Stark shift is maximized, the spin-orbit Stark parameter is four orders of magnitude larger than in silicon. At select orientations a hyperfine Stark effect was also resolved and is an order of magnitude larger than in silicon. We report the Stark parameters for As75 and P31 donor electrons and compare them to the available theory. Our data reveal that P31 donors in germanium can be tuned by at least four times the ensemble linewidth, making germanium an appealing new host material for spin qubits that offers major advantages over silicon.