In this article, the optical properties of ZnO:Be films grown by plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy were investigated by the excitation density-dependent and temperature-dependent photoluminescence measurements. The low temperature photoluminescence spectra showed a dominant excitons bound to neutral donors (D degrees X) emission centered at 3.3540 eV and strong donor-acceptor pair (DAP) transitions at 3.3000 eV. In addition, it showed that the intensity ratio of the DAP and D degrees X peaks changed with background electron concentration. Furthermore, a shallow acceptor state with ionization energy of 116 meV was found and attributed to Zn vacancy. The present study further suggests that Be and N codoping ZnO might be suitable for fabricating reliable p-type ZnO materials. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.