Unusual near-band-edge photoluminescence at room temperature in heavily-doped ZnO:Al thin films prepared by pulsed laser deposition

•Studied PL properties of heavily-doped ZnO:Al films grown by PLD.•Unusual strong near-band-edge emissions and negligible deep-level emission at RT.•Increased optical band gap with growth temperature and thus carrier concentration.•Stokes shift and PL peak width increased with carrier concentration.•Results explained by a model based on local potential fluctuations.

Room temperature photoluminescence (PL) properties of heavily-doped ZnO:Al thin films (with carrier concentration n in the range of 5–20 × 1020 cm−3) prepared by pulsed laser deposition have been investigated. Despite their high carrier concentration, the films exhibited strong room temperature near-band-edge bound excitons at ∼3.34 eV and an unusual peak at ∼3.16 eV, and negligible deep-level emission even for the films deposited at a temperature as low as 25 °C. The radiative efficiency of the films increased with growth temperature as a result of increased n and improved crystallinity. A large blue shift of optical band gap was observed, which is consistent with the n-dependent Burstein–Moss and band gap-renormalization effects. Comparison of the results of the PL and optical measurements revealed a large Stokes shift that increased with increase in n. It has been explained by a model based on local potential fluctuations caused by randomly-distributed doping impurities.