Theoretical and experimental depth-resolved cathodoluminescence microanalysis of excitonic emission from ZnO epilayers

In this letter, the excitonic emissions from ZnO epilayers were studied by depth-resolved cathodoluminescence (CL) microanalysis. An excellent agreement between the redshift of the experimental depth-resolved CL emission and theoretically simulated values was observed, which clearly identified its origin to be the strong internal absorption in ZnO epilayer. Moreover, the rigorous Monte Carlo simulated CL generation profiles with the correction of self-absorption exhibit the reasonable correspondence with the measured CL intensities. The intensity discrepancies for low and high excitation cases have been interpreted by the occurrence of the excess carrier nonradiative recombination on the surface space charge layer and the exciton nonradiative quenching processing by defects or structural disorders near the interface of ZnO and sapphire.