The photoluminescence (PL) spectra of the undoped ZnO films deposited on Si substrates by dc reactive sputtering have been studied. There are two emission peaks, centered at 3.18 eV (UV) and 2.38 eV (green). The variation of these peak intensities and that of the I–V properties of the ZnO/Si heterojunctions were investigated at different annealing temperatures and atmospheres. The defect levels in ZnO films were also calculated using the method of full-potential linear muffin-tin orbital. It is concluded that the green emission corresponds to the local level composed by oxide antisite defect OZn rather than oxygen vacancy VO, zinc vacancy VZn, interstitial zinc Zni, and interstitial oxygen Oi.

The Ag-doped ZnO films were deposited on Si substrates by dc reactive sputtering. Obvious enhancement of ultraviolet (UV) emission of the samples was observed due to Ag2O nanoclusters formatted during Ag doping. The UV emission consisted of two peaks. The 348nm peak was attributed to Ag2O nanoclusters, and the 382nm one was attributed to ZnO. The strongest UV emission of a certain ZnO–Ag2O film was over ten times stronger than that of a pure ZnO film, which was an exciting result. The enhancement of UV emission was caused by excitons formed at the interface between Ag2O nanoclusters and ZnO grains.

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Silver (Ag) doped and undoped ZnO films were grown on Si (100) substrates by the sol-gel process. Photoluminescence (PL) of two kinds of samples as a function of the excitation intensity has been measured, and PL intensities have been fitted by a power law. It is found that Ag doping increases the intensity of free emission from ZnO and does not change the position and the full width at half-maximum of the free exciton emission. In PL spectra of two kinds of samples under various excitation powers, no visible emission bands related to the deep levels were observed. These results reveal that doped Ag in ZnO films only enhances emission efficiency from free exciton recombination, not giving rise to new emissions.

Temperature-dependent photoluminescence (PL) of nanocrystalline ZnO thin films grown on Si (100) substrates using a sol–gel method has been investigated. From the PL spectra measured in 83–293K, the excitonic emissions and their multiple-phonon replicas have been observed in ultraviolet region, and their origins have been identified. Moreover, it has been found that the temperature dependence of the free exciton peak position can be described by standard expression, and the thermal activation energy extracted from the temperature dependence of the free exciton peak intensity is about 101meV.