Excitonic transitions and dynamics in front and back surfaces of ZnO films grown by plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy

We report strong exciton transition and exciton-phonon couplings in photoluminescence (PL) of ZnO thin films grown on MgO/sapphire (buffer/substrate) by plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy. The PL spectra at 10 K showed the intensity of the dominant emission, donor-bound exciton transition of front surface (top surface, the latter part in growth) is found to be about 100 times higher than that of back surface (in-depth bottom area, the initial part), while the room temperature PL spectra showed dominant contributions from the free exciton emissions and phonon-replicas of free excitons for front surface and back surface, respectively, It could be attributed to the strong contributions of exciton-phonon coupling. Time resolved PL spectra reveal that the life time of exciton recombination from the front surface are longer than those from back surface. This is most probably due to the fact that reduction of non-radiative recombination in the front surface. This investigation indicates that the existence of native defects or trap centers which can be reduced by the proper initial condition in growth and the exciton-phonon interaction couplings play an important role in optical properties and crystal quality of ZnO thin films.