Investigating the competition of radiative and nonradiative recombination in (In,Ga)N quantum wells

We present a combined theoretical and experimental analysis of Auger recombination in c-plane (In,Ga)N quantum wells. On the theoretical side we use an atomistic model that accounts for random alloy fluctuations to investigate the impact that temperature and carrier density has on the radiative and Auger recombination rate. Our calculations indicate a weak temperature dependence of the Auger rate compared to the temperature dependence of the radiative rate. However, with increasing carrier density the Auger rate increases more strongly when compared to the radiative rate. Our theory results indicate an onset of the efficiency drop at carrier densities ≳ 1×10
¹⁹
cm
⁻³
, in very good agreement with our photoluminescence studies on similar (In,Ga)N quantum well samples. Overall, we find that alloy enhanced Auger recombination is sufficient to explain the experimental data investigated here.