Photoluminescence associated with basal stacking faults in c-plane ZnO epitaxial film grown by atomic layer deposition

Abstract

Basal plane stacking faults (BSFs) with density of similar to 1 x 10(6) cm(-1) are identified as the dominant defect in the annealed ZnO thin films grown on c-plane sapphire by atomic layer deposition. The dominant peak centered at 3.321 eV in low-temperature photoluminescence measurements is attributed to the emission from the BSFs. The emission mechanism is considered to be the confined indirect excitons in the region of quantum-well-like structure formed by the BSFs. The observed energy shift of 19 meV with respect to the BSF-bounded exciton at low temperature may be caused by the localization effect associated with the coupling between BSF quantum wells. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi. org/10.1063/1.3692730]