Abstract
Room temperature photoluminescence (PL) properties of heavily-doped ZnO:Al thin films (with carrier concentration n in the range of 5-20 × 10 20 cm-3) prepared by pulsed laser deposition have been investigated. Despite their high carrier concentration, the films exhibited strong room temperature near-band-edge bound excitons at ∼3.34 eV and an unusual peak at ∼3.16 eV, and negligible deep-level emission even for the films deposited at a temperature as low as 25 C. The radiative efficiency of the films increased with growth temperature as a result of increased n and improved crystallinity. A large blue shift of optical band gap was observed, which is consistent with the n-dependent Burstein-Moss and band gap-renormalization effects. Comparison of the results of the PL and optical measurements revealed a large Stokes shift that increased with increase in n. It has been explained by a model based on local potential fluctuations caused by randomly-distributed doping impurities.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 610-615 |
| Number of pages | 6 |
| Journal | Materials Chemistry and Physics |
| Volume | 140 |
| Issue number | 2-3 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2013 Jul 15 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This work was financially supported by the Korea Institute for Advancement of Technology (KIAT) through a workforce development program in strategic technology, and by the Converging Research Center Program ( 2012K001270 )/the National Research Foundation of Korea grant ( 2011-0020285 ) funded by the Korean government (MEST & MKE).
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- Materials Science(all)
- Condensed Matter Physics