Room temperature excitonic dynamics of non-polar a-plane ZnO epifilms

Pump polarization dependent carrier dynamics, particularly excitonic dynamics, of non-polar a-plane zinc oxide (ZnO) epifilms with two different thicknesses were investigated using time resolved measurements. Unlike the electron and hole dynamics through the above-bandgap excitation, transient differential reflectance (TDR) traces revealed similar trends under two orthogonal pump polarization conditions relative to the c-axis (Epu⊥c and Epu∥c) of a-ZnO around near-exciton-resonance excitation. By means of a band diagram, the bandgap renormalization (BGR) effect can be reasonably explained by the screening of the Coulomb potential energy due to the accumulation of relaxed free carriers that were initially excited through the absorption of two cascaded pump photons via the excitonic level, a process known as two photon absorption (TPA). Thus, the modulation depths of the TPA around zero time delay, due to simultaneous absorption of one pump and one probe photon via the excitonic level, increased linearly with the pump fluence, proportional to the modulation depth resulting from the BGR effects.