Temperature dependence of near ultraviolet photoluminescence in ZnO/(Mg, Zn)O multiple quantum wells

We report on temperature dependence of excitonic photoluminescence (PL) from ZnO/(Mg, Zn)O multiple quantum wells (MQWs). Two kinds of MQWs having different barrier heights grown by laser molecular-beam epitaxy showed significantly different temperature dependences of PL spectra; in ZnO/Mg0.27Zn0.73O MQWs, the PL peak energy at 50–200 K was a monotonically increasing function of temperature, which was opposite to that ascribed by band gap shrinkage. Moreover, spectra taken at 95–200 K encompassed two peaks, both of which originated from recombination of localized excitons. The temperature-induced shift (redshift-blueshift-peak duplication-redshift) at 5–300 K is caused by a change in the exciton dynamics with increasing temperature due to inhomogeneity and the exciton localization effect. On the other hand, the corresponding dependence in ZnO/Mg0.12Zn0.88O MQWs (lower barrier height) was similar to that in bulk II–VI semiconductors.