Photoluminescence of Ga-doped ZnO nanorods prepared by chemical vapor deposition

Ga-doped zinc oxide (ZnO) nanorods were prepared by simply evaporating the mixture of Zn powders and Ga droplets. The obtained quasi-aligned nanorods are about 150 nm in diameter and 1.5 μm in length. X-ray diffraction pattern shows only the diffraction peaks from wurtzite ZnO without secondary phase, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy shows the content of Ga in ZnO nanorods as high as about 0.9 at.%. Photoluminescence measurement shows a donor-bound exciton (D0X) emission which is considerably broad even at low temperature due to the incorporation of Ga. However, it can be speculated from the photoluminescence that only a part of the incorporated Ga substitute Zn sites and act as donors.