Enhanced visible photoluminescence from ultrathin ZnO films grown on Si-nanowires by atomic layer deposition

Bright room temperature visible emission is obtained in heterostructures consisting of similar to 3.5 nm thick ZnO ultrathin films grown on Si-nanowires produced by means of self-masking dry etching in hydrogen-containing plasma. The ZnO films were deposited on Si-nanowires by using atomic layer deposition (ALD) under an ambient temperature of 25 degrees C. The orders of magnitude enhancement in the intensity of the room temperature photoluminescence peaked around 560 nm in the present ZnO/Si-nanowire heterostructures is presumably due to the high aspect (surface/volume) ratio inherent to the Si-nanowires, which has, in turn, allowed considerably more ZnO material to be grown on the template and led to markedly more efficient visible emission. Moreover, the ordered nanowire structure also features an extremely low reflectance (similar to 0.15%) at 325 nm, which may further enhance the efficiency of emission by effectively trapping the excitation light.