Passivation mechanism of nitrogen in ZnO under different oxygen ambience

Abstract

Nitrogen-doped ZnO thin films were grown on a-plane Al 2 O 3 by plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy. Hall-effect measurements indicated that the nitrogen-doped ZnO films showed p-type behavior first, then n-type, with the growth conditions changing from oxygen-radical-rich to oxygen-radical-deficient ambience, accompanied with the increase of the N/O ratio in the plasmas. The increasing green emission in the low temperature photoluminescence spectra, related to single ionized oxygen vacancy in ZnO, was ascribed to the decrease of active oxygen atoms in the precursor plasmas. CN complex, a donor defect with low formation energy, was demonstrated to be easily introduced into ZnO under O-radical-deficient ambience, which compensated the nitrogen-related acceptor, along with the oxygen vacancy.