Deterministic Detection of Single Ion Implantation

Single ion implantation using focused ion beam systems enables high spatial resolution and maskless doping for rapid and scalable engineering of materials for quantum technologies, particularly for the generation of qubits and colour centres in solid‐state hosts. In these applications, the confidence with which a single ion can be deterministically implanted is critical, and so the efficiency of the detection mechanism is a vital parameter to understand. Here, we present a study of the single ion detection efficiency for a variety of ion species (Si, P, Mn, Co, Ge, Sb, Au, and Bi) into various hosts (Si, SiO ₂ , Al ₂ O ₃ , GaAs, diamond, and SiC). The effect of varying ion mass, charge, and kinetic energy is studied, in addition to the cluster implantation of Sb, Au, and Bi. The detection efficiencies measured vary from 40% to 100%, based on the substrate and ion beam combination.We demonstrate that it is possible to achieve detection efficiencies >90% for a wide range of ion species and substrate combinations through selection of the implantation parameters. Furthermore, detection efficiencies of 100% are found for the doping of Sb clusters, which is of direct relevance for the future fabrication of quantum devices.