Locking of electron spin coherence above 20 ms in natural silicon carbide

We demonstrate that silicon carbide (SiC) with a natural isotope abundance can preserve a coherent spin superposition in silicon vacancies over an unexpectedly long time exceeding 20 ms. The spin-locked subspace with a drastically reduced decoherence rate is attained through the suppression of heteronuclear spin crosstalking by applying a moderate magnetic field in combination with dynamic decoupling from the nuclear spin baths. Furthermore, we identify several phonon-assisted mechanisms of spin-lattice relaxation and find that it can be extremely long at cryogenic temperatures, equal to or even longer than 10 s. Our approach may be extended to other polyatomic compounds and opens a path towards improved qubit memory for wafer-scale quantum technologies.