Luminescence properties of ZnO layers grown on Si-on-insulator substrates

Abstract

The authors report on the photoluminescence properties of polycrystalline ZnO thin films grown on compliant silicon-on-insulator (SOI) substrates by radio frequency magnetron sputtering. The ZnO thin films on SOI were characterized by micro-Raman and photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy. The observation of E2high optical phonon mode near 438cm−1 in the Raman spectra of the ZnO samples represents the wurtzite crystal structure. Apart from the near-band-edge free exciton (FX) transition around 3.35eV at 77K, the PL spectra of such ZnO films also showed a strong defect-induced violet emission peak in the range of 3.05–3.09eV. Realization of such ZnO layers on SOI would be useful for heterointegration with SOI-based microelectronics and microelectromechanical systems.