Temperature behavior of electron-acceptor transitions and oxygen vacancy recombinations in ZnO thin films

The present study focuses on the photoluminescence (PL) properties of ZnO films prepared by the reaction of water and zinc. Temperature-dependent PL characteristics of the ZnO films have been investigated in the range from 15 to 260 K. The PL spectrum at 15 K is dominated by neutral donor-bound exciton (D0X) emissions. The emission line at about 3.304 eV can be due to the transition of free electrons to neutral acceptor states (eA0). It is suggested that the ultraviolet emission at room temperature can be attributed to the incorporation of eA0 and free exciton (FX) transitions, rather than sole FX. According to the temperature behavior of green band, it is further confirmed that the green emission is mainly related to the singly ionized oxygen vacancies.