Photoluminescence of Donor-Doped ZnSe Films Grown by Molecular Beam Epitaxy

We studied the effect of the donor doping of ZnSe films on their photoluminescence properties. The samples were doped during the molecular beam epitaxy growth, either with gallium or with chlorine. As the dopant concentration dose increases, the intensity of the band-edge emission first saturates, and then quenches in favor of the deep-level photoluminescence band. The main effect of donor doping on photoluminescence is a strong increase in intensity of the donor-bound exciton line, referred to as I$\text{}_{2}$. For Ga-doped films deep-band emission is much stronger, and the I$\text{}_{2}$-line is slightly weaker than for Cl-doped films with comparable doping level. The results confirm the superiority of chlorine over gallium as an n-type dopant in ZnSe. We discuss the photoluminescence results and relate them to deep level transient spectroscopy data obtained on the same samples.