Anomalous shifts of blue and yellow luminescence bands in MBE-grown ZnO films

Abstract

We observed strong shifts of the blue and yellow luminescence bands with variation of excitation intensity in ZnO films grown on sapphire by MBE using hydrogen peroxide as a source of reactive oxygen. The blue band, having a maximum in the range from 2.85 to 3.15 eV in different samples and different excitation intensities at 10 K, is attributed to diagonal transitions from the conduction band (or shallow donors) to the valence band in realm of potential fluctuations caused by random distribution of charged point defects in a compensated semiconductor. The yellow band is related to an unidentified deep acceptor.