Donor–acceptor pair recombination in gallium sulfide

Low temperature photoluminescence of GaS single crystals shows three broad emission bands below 2.4 eV. Temperature and excitation light intensity dependencies of these bands reveal that all of them originate from close donor–acceptor pair recombination processes. Temperature dependence of the peak energies of two of these bands in the visible range follow, as expected, the band gap energy shift of GaS. However, the temperature dependence of the peak energy of the third band in the near infrared shows complex behavior by blueshifting at low temperatures followed by a redshift at intermediate temperatures and a second blueshift close to room temperature, which could only be explained via a configuration coordinate model. A simple model calculation indicates that the recombination centers are most likely located at the nearest neighbor lattice or interstitial sites.