Highly efficient orange emission in ZnO:Se nanorods

Abstract

The origin of the visible emissions in ZnO nanostructures is a long-standing issue. In this work, a strong orange emission around 2.1 eV in ZnO:Se nanorods is reported. Temperature-dependent photoluminescence (PL) and PL decay results indicate that radiative recombination dominates the overall decay process, leading to highly efficient orange emission at room temperature. It is proposed that Se acts as isoelectronic centers and no evidence of ZnO1−xSex alloy formation is found. Based on the PL excitation results, we propose a Se-induced impurity band model to describe the photophysics of the orange emission.