Engineering local strain for single-atom nuclear acoustic resonance in silicon

Mechanical strain plays a key role in the physics and operation of nanoscale semiconductor systems, including quantum dots and single-dopant devices. Here we describe the design of a nanoelectronic device where a single nuclear spin is coherently controlled via nuclear acoustic resonance (NAR) through the local application of dynamical strain. The strain drives spin transitions by modulating the nuclear quadrupole interaction. We adopt an AlN piezoelectric actuator compatible with standard silicon metal-oxide-semiconductor processing, and optimize the device layout to maximize the NAR drive. We predict NAR Rabi frequencies of order 200Hz for a single ¹²³Sb nucleus in a wide region of the device. Spin transitions driven directly by electric fields are suppressed in the center of the device, allowing the observation of pure NAR. Using electric field gradient-elastic tensors calculated by density-functional theory, we extend our predictions to other high-spin group-V donors in silicon, and to the isoelectronic ⁷³Ge atom.