ZnO/(Zn)MgO polar and nonpolar superlattices

The bandgaps of short period ZnO/(Zn)MgO superlattices deposited on c-, m-, and a-ZnO substrates were examined both theoretically and experimentally. Ab initio calculations showed that the bandgaps of c-oriented polar superlattices are smaller than those of nonpolar ones; however, this is mainly due to different geometric configurations, because the influence of internal electric fields existing in polar superlattices is not very significant. The calculations revealed that for 5-6 MgO monolayers in the barriers, the bandgap values become independent of the barrier thickness, which suggests that such superlattices can be treated as sets of isolated ZnO wells. In the experimental part of this work, it is demonstrated that short period ZnO/MgO and ZnO/ZnMgO superlattices can be grown successfully on differently oriented crystalline bulk ZnO substrates using molecular beam epitaxy. The bandgaps of the superlattices were determined from low temperature photoluminescence measurements. It is shown that they agree well with the theoretical results. Published under license by AIP Publishing.