Improvement in crystallinity and optical properties of ZnO epitaxial layers by thermal annealed ZnO buffer layers with oxygen plasma

ZnO epitaxial layers with treated low-temperature (LT) ZnO buffer layers were grown by plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy (PA-MBE) on p-type Si (1 0 0) substrates. The LT-ZnO buffer layers were treated by thermal annealing in O₂ plasma with various radio frequency (RF) power ranging from 100 to 300 W before the ZnO epilayers growth. Atomic force microscopy (AFM), high-resolution X-ray diffraction (HR-XRD), and room-temperature (RT) photoluminescence (PL) were carried out to investigate their structural and optical properties. The surface roughness measured by AFM was improved from 2.71 to 0.59 nm. The full-width at half-maximum (FWHM) of the rocking curve observed for ZnO (0 0 2) XRD and photoluminescence of the ZnO epilayers was decreased from 0.24° to 0.18° and from 232 to 133 meV, respectively. The intensity of the XRD rocking curve and the PL emission peak were increased. The XRD intensity ratio of the ZnO (0 0 2) to Si substrates and PL intensity ratio of the near-band edge emissions (NBEE) to the deep-level emissions (DLE) as a function of the RF power was increased from 0.166 to 0.467 and from 2.54 to 4.01, respectively. These results imply that the structural and optical properties of ZnO epilayers were improved by the treatment process.