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We report room-temperature time-integrated and time-resolved photoluminescence (PL) measurements on a nominally undoped wurtzite ZnO thin film grown on (001) silicon. A linear and sublinear excitation intensity Iex dependence of the PL intensity were observed for the 379.48-nm exciton line and the weak broad green band (∼510 nm), respectively. The green luminescence was found to decay as hyperbolic t−1, and its peak energy was observed to increase nearly logarithmically with increased Iex. These results are in an excellent agreement with the tunnel-assisted donor–deep-acceptor pair (DAP) model so that its large blueshifts of about 25 meV per decade increase in Iex can be accounted for by the screening of the fluctuating impurity potential. Also, the 30-ps fast decay of the exciton emission was attributed to the rapid trapping of carriers at luminescent impurities, while the short lifetime of τ1/e=200 ps for the green luminescence may be due to an alternative trapping by deeper centers in the ZnO. Finally, singly ionized oxygen and zinc vacancies have been tentatively invoked to act as donor–deep-acceptor candidates for the DAP luminescence, respectively.

The wavelength dependence of the third-order nonlinear optical susceptibilities, χ(3), of the Au:TiO2 composite films with Au concentration varying from 15% to 60% (volume fraction), was measured by a degenerate four-wave mixing (DFWM) technique using a probe laser with a pulse width of 200 fs. It was found that, with the wavelength of the probe laser close to the surface plasmon resonance (∼680 nm), both the χ(3) and the figure of merit, χ(3)/α (α is optical absorption coefficient) were significantly enhanced. The maximum value of the χ(3) was 6×10−7 esu and occurred at an Au concentration of about 38%. Femtosecond time-resolved DFWM measurements revealed that the response time of the optical nonlinearity in the Au:TiO2 films is extremely fast. The time-resolved DFWM results suggest that the main physical mechanism involved in the optical nonlinearity in Au:TiO2 films on the femtoseconds time scale is the interband electric–dipole transition, and the hot electron excitation only partially contributes to the χ(3) on the femtosecond time scale and it becomes dominant only in the picosecond region.

A liquid crystalline molecule tetraphenyle­thylene‐PPE with aggregation‐induced emissive characteristics is synthesized. Anisotropic emission is obtained through the dissolution of tetraphenylethylene‐PPE into nematic liquid crystals. Two types of photoluminescent display devices are fabricated with the mixture. This approach provides a path for building energy‐saving light‐emitting liquid crystal display devices that avoid the aggregation‐caused quenching problem.