Field-assisted Shockley-Read-Hall recombinations in III-nitride quantum wells

The physical process driving low-current non-radiative recombinations in high-quality III-nitride quantum wells is investigated. Lifetime measurements reveal that these recombinations scale with the overlap of the electron and hole wavefunctions and show a weak temperature dependence, in contrast to common empirical expectations for Shockley-Read-Hall recombinations. A model of field-assisted multiphonon point defect recombination in quantum wells is introduced and shown to quantitatively explain the data. This study clarifies how III-nitride LEDs can achieve high efficiency despite the presence of strong polarization fields.