Temperature dependent study of basal plane stacking faults in Ag:ZnO nanorods by Raman and photoluminescence spectroscopy

We report the specific features of basal plane stacking faults (BSFs) in ZnO nanorods (NRs), studied by temperature dependent photoluminescence and Raman spectroscopy. At low temperature (4 K) the intense band of emission at 3.321 eV is attributed to the presence of BSFs defects and Ag as an acceptor dopant in ZnO. This specific peak red-shifts with the temperature increase, occupying the position 3.210 eV at RT. The nature of the emission is explained as exciton recombination of the electrons, confined in the homo-heterojunction QW, with the holes, localized near the Ag atoms close to SFs. Raman spectroscopy revealed that Ag:ZnO nanorods have slightly downshifted positions of the modes 330 cm−1 and 440 cm−1 by 4 cm−1, which we explain as due to the presence of BSFs. It was also observed, that the longitudinal optical phonon mode ALO, which is common polar mode for ZnO, was not detected by Raman spectroscopy in the samples with high BSFs density. This feature can be explained as due to existence of the bound charge induced by the BSFs in the NRs.