Comparisons of structural and optical properties of ZnO films grown on (0 0 0 1) sapphire and GaN/(0 0 0 1) sapphire template by atmospheric-pressure MOCVD

In this paper, we compare the properties of ZnO thin films on (0 0 0 1) sapphire and GaN/c-Al2O3 templates by atmospheric pressure metal–organic chemical vapor deposition (AP-MOCVD) using deionized water (H2O) and diethylzinc (DEZn) as the O and Zn precursors, respectively. The atomic force microscopy (AFM) images exhibited that ZnO films grown on GaN/c-Al2O3 template had a regular hexagonal columnar and smooth morphology, and the ZnO grown on c-Al2O3 film had the hexagonal pyramid morphology. The full widths at half maximum (FWHMs) of the (0 0 0 2) and (10–12) ω-rocking curves of ZnO film grown on GaN/c-Al2O3 template were 182 and 358 arcs, respectively, indicating the smaller mosaicity and lower dislocation density of the film compared to ZnO film grown on c-Al2O3. The room temperature PL spectra showed that the PL intensity ratio of the band-edge emission (BEE) to the deep-level emission (DLE) for the ZnO film on GaN/c-Al2O3 template was larger than that of the film on c-Al2O3. Besides, the FXC (or the first excited state of A exciton) and four phonon replicas could be clearly observed in ZnO film on GaN/c-Al2O3 template at 10 K compared to ZnO film on c-Al2O3.