In this paper, the authors demonstrate an effective pathway to enhance the p-type conduction in N-doped ZnO through codoping method with tellurium during metal-organic chemical vapor deposition process. Tellurium may act as a surfactant in reducing the formation energy of the NO acceptors and thus to enhance the incorporation efficiency of nitrogen. In addition, this codoping method shows a significant effect in suppressing the formation of donorlike carbon related complexes. The increased hole carrier concentration exhibits strong evidence to the enhancement of dopant solubility, and the Te–N codoping method provides an efficient technique for realizing p-type ZnO.

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The structural, energetic, and electronic properties of lattice highly mismatched ZnY1−xOx (Y = S, Se, Te) ternary alloys with dilute O concentrations are calculated from first principles within the density functional theory. We demonstrate the formation of an isolated intermediate electronic band structure through diluted O-substitute in zinc-blende ZnY (Y = S, Se, Te) at octahedral sites in a semiconductor by the calculations of density of states (DOS), leading to a significant absorption below the band gap of the parent semiconductor and an enhancement of the optical absorption in the whole energy range of the solar spectrum. It is found that the intermediate band states should be described as a result of the coupling between impurity O 2p states with the conduction band states. Moreover, the intermediate bands (IBs) in ZnTeO show high stabilization with the change of O concentration resulting from the largest electronegativity difference between O and Te compared with in the other ZnSO and ZnSeO.