Impact of random alloy fluctuations on the carrier distribution in multi-color (In,Ga)N/GaN quantum well systems

Abstract

In this work, we study the impact that random alloy fluctuations have on the distribution of electrons and holes across the active region of a (In,Ga)N/GaN multi-quantum well based light emitting diode (LED). To do so, an atomistic tight-binding model is employed to account for alloy fluctuations on a microscopic level and the resulting tight-binding energy landscape forms input to a drift-diffusion model. Here, quantum corrections are introduced via localization landscape theory and we show that when neglecting alloy disorder our theoretical framework yields results similar to commercial software packages that employ a self-consistent Schroedinger-Poisson-drift-diffusion solver. Similar to experimental studies in the literature, we have focused on a multi-quantum well system where two of the three wells have the same In content while the third well differs in In content. By changing the order of wells in this multicolor quantum well structure and looking at the relative radiative recombination rates of the different emitted wavelengths, we (i) gain insight into the distribution of carriers in such a system and (ii) can compare our findings to trends observed in experiment. Our results indicate that the distribution of carriers depends significantly on the treatment of the quantum well microstructure. When including random alloy fluctuations and quantum corrections in the simulations, the calculated trends in the relative radiative recombination rates as a function of the well ordering are consistent with previous experimental studies. The results from the widely employed virtual crystal approximation contradict the experimental data. Overall, our work highlights the importance of a careful and detailed theoretical description of the carrier transport in an (In,Ga)N/GaN multi-quantum well system to ultimately guide the design of the active region of III-N-based LED structures.