Correlation of spectral features of photoluminescence with residual native defects of ZnO thin films annealed at different temperatures

We investigated the effects of post-growth annealing in the temperature range of 873 to 1273 K on the spectral features of photoluminescence (PL) vis-a-vis the crystalline and compositional native defects of ZnO thin films grown at 773 K by pulsed laser deposition (PLD) on sapphire substrates. It is found in the PL spectra at 10 K that the deep level emission (DLE) shifted from red-orange spectral region of ∼1.8–2.4 eV to yellow–green region of ∼2.4–2.9 eV with the increasing temperature of annealing. We propose that the PL in red-orange region originating from the singly ionized oxygen vacancies diminished due to increased replenishment of oxygen with increasing annealing temperature and that in the yellow–green region originating from the oxygen interstitials and/or zinc vacancies increased due to enhanced concentration of these point defects. As the annealing temperature was increased, the overall intensity of PL in the DLE region increased slightly up to 973 K but beyond that it increased steeply and ...

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