Optical Measurements and Theoretical Modelling of Excitons in Double ZnO/ZnMgO Quantum Wells in an Internal Electric Field

Materials (Basel). 2021 Nov 26;14(23):7222. doi: 10.3390/ma14237222.

Abstract

In this paper, the photoluminescence spectra of excitons in ZnO/ZnMgO/ZnO double asymmetric quantum wells grown on a-plane Al2O3 substrates with internal electric-field bands structures were studied. In these structures, the electron and the hole in the exciton are spatially separated between neighbouring quantum wells, by a ZnMgO barrier with different thickness. The existence of an internal electric field generates a linear potential and, as a result, lowers the energy of quantum states in the well. For the wide wells, the electrons are spatially separated from the holes and can create indirect exciton. To help the understanding of the photoluminescence spectra, for single particle states the 8 k·p for wurtzite structure is employed. Using these states, the exciton in the self-consistent model with 2D hydrogenic 1s-like wave function is calculated.

Keywords: ZnO; effective-mass theory; excitons; photoluminescence; semiconductors.