Silent Raman modes in zinc oxide and related nitrides

Abstract

Anomalous Raman modes have been reported in several recent papers dealing with doped- and undoped-ZnO layers grown by different methods. Most of these anomalous Raman modes have been attributed to local vibrational modes of impurities or defects. However, we will show that most of the observed modes correspond to wurtzite-ZnO silent modes allowed by the breakdown of the translational crystal symmetry induced by defects and impurities.