Low-temperature photoluminescence of Sb-doped ZnO nanowires synthesized on Sb-coated Si substrate by chemical vapor deposition method

The fabrication of p-type ZnO crystal is motivated by the need to develop ZnO semiconductor devices. On the other hand, it is well-known that high-quality nano-sized ZnO crystal can be easily obtained by various crystal growth techniques. Consequently, we tried to grow p-type Sb-doped ZnO nanowires by the chemical vapor deposition under various deposition temperature conditions and investigated their optical properties by photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy. Multiple emission peaks caused by free excitons, excitons bound to donors and structural defects, and acceptors formed by Sb-doping were observed. The temperature dependence of PL confirmed the existence of acceptor level due to Sb-doping, and the activation energy of the acceptor level was estimated to be 125 meV. © Springer India 2014.