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Title: Deep donor state of the copper acceptor as a source of green luminescence in ZnO

Journal Article · · Applied Physics Letters
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4995404· OSTI ID:1473864
 [1]; ORCiD logo [2];  [3]; ORCiD logo [4]
  1. Naval Research Lab. (NRL), Washington, DC (United States)
  2. Center for Physical Sciences and Technology, Vilnius (Lithuania)
  3. Univ. of Delaware, Newark, DE (United States)
  4. Univ. of California, Santa Barbara, CA (United States)

Copper impurities have long been linked with green luminescence (GL) in ZnO. Copper is known to introduce an acceptor level close to the conduction band of ZnO, and the GL has conventionally been attributed to transitions involving an excited state which localizes holes on neighboring oxygen atoms. To date, a theoretical description of the optical properties of such deep centers has been difficult to achieve due to the limitations of functionals in the density functional theory. Here, we employ a screened hybrid density functional to calculate the properties of Cu in ZnO. In agreement with the experiment, we find that CuZn features an acceptor level near the conduction band of ZnO. However, we find that CuZn also gives rise to a deep donor level 0.46 eV above the valence band of ZnO; the calculated optical transitions involving this state agree well with the GL observed in ZnO:Cu.

Research Organization:
Univ. of California, Santa Barbara, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)
Grant/Contract Number:
SC0010689
OSTI ID:
1473864
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1372412
Journal Information:
Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 111, Issue 4; ISSN 0003-6951
Publisher:
American Institute of Physics (AIP)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 22 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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