Generation of nitrogen acceptors in ZnO using pulse thermal processing

Bipolar doping in wide bandgap semiconductors is difficult to achieve under equilibrium conditions because of the spontaneous formation of compensating defects and unfavorable energetics for dopant substitution. In this work, we explored the use of rapid pulse thermal processing for activating nitrogen dopants into acceptor states in ZnO. Low-temperature photoluminescence spectra revealed both acceptor-bound exciton (A X0) and donor-acceptor pair emissions, which present direct evidence for acceptors generated after pulse thermal processing of nitrogen-doped ZnO. This work suggests that pulse thermal processing is potentially an effective method for p -type doping of ZnO.