Impact of carrier localization on recombination in InGaN quantum wells and the efficiency of nitride light-emitting diodes: insights from theory and numerical simulations

Abstract

We examine the effect of carrier localization due to random alloy fluctuations on the radiative and Auger recombination rates in InGaN quantum wells as a function of alloy composition, crystal orientation, carrier density, and temperature. Our results show that alloy fluctuations reduce individual transition matrix elements by the separate localization of electrons and holes, but this effect is overcompensated by the additional transitions enabled by translational symmetry breaking and the resulting lack of momentum conservation. Hence, we find that localization increases both radiative and Auger recombination rates, but that Auger recombination rates increase by one order of magnitude more than radiative rates. Furthermore, we demonstrate that localization has an overall detrimental effect on the efficiency-droop and green-gap problems of InGaN LEDs.

Main text is 7 pages and includes 6 figures. Supplementary information is 7 pages and includes 2 figures and 2 tables

References in corpus (3)

• Unraveling the "Green Gap" problem: The role of random alloy fluctuations in InGaN/GaN light emitting diodes
• Atomistic analysis of the impact of alloy and well-width fluctuations on the electronic and optical properties of InGaN/GaN quantum wells
• First-principles calculations of indirect Auger recombination in nitride semiconductors

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Quantum efficiency of III-Nitride emitters: evidence for defect-assisted non-radiative recombination and its effect on the green gap
• Efficiency Models for GaN-based Light-Emitting Diodes: Status and Challenges
• Polar InGaN/GaN quantum wells: Revisiting the impact of carrier localization on the green gap problem
• Interface roughness, carrier localization and wave function overlap in $c$-plane InGaN/GaN quantum wells: Interplay of well width, alloy microstructure, structural inhomogeneities and Coulomb effects
• Impact of random alloy fluctuations on the electronic and optical properties of (Al,Ga)N quantum wells: Insights from tight-binding calculations
• Unlocking the Origin of Compositional Fluctuations in InGaN Light Emitting Diodes
• Increased light-emission efficiency in disordered InGaN through the correlated reduction of recombination rates
• Optical properties of InGaN quantum wells: accurately modeling the effects of disorder