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Luminescence from hot carrier interband recombination in wide InGaN quantum wells

Conny Becht1, Lukas Uhlig1, Mateusz Hajdel2, Grzegorz Muziol2, and Ulrich T. Schwarz1,*

  • *Contact author: ulrich.schwarz@physik.tu-chemnitz.de
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Phys. Rev. B 112, 165310 – Published 23 October, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/5x2d-jdly

Abstract

Direct radiative recombination of high excited confined states across the band gap is observed as a broad emission band above the InGaN band edge in photoluminescence and electroluminescence for wide InGaN quantum wells (QWs). The observation of hot carrier interband recombination is possible in wide InGaN quantum wells because the transitions between the lower lying confined states are spatially indirect due to the piezoelectric field, and therefore become dark states with extremely low radiative transition rates at low carrier densities. Hot carrier luminescence was observed consistently for 7.8- and 25−nm-wide QWs at low and room temperature, while it is absent for a 2.6−nm-thin QW. The spectrum of the emission is explained by k·p simulations assuming a weak dependency of the transition matrix element on the subband of the confined states, and a limited extent of carrier momentum around the Γ point.

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Phys. Rev. B 112, 165310– Published 23 October, 2025
  • Received 1 July 2025
  • Revised 18 September 2025
  • Accepted 30 September 2025
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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