Volumes and Issues
Home » Semiconductors » Year 2025, issue 9 » Article p. 496
<<<>>>
Auger recombination mechanisms in semiconductor nanoheterostructures. Part 1. Quantum wells (R e v i e w)
Russian version
Zegrya G. G.1, Bazhenov N. L. 1
1Ioffe Institute, St. Petersburg, Russia
Email: zegrya@theory.ioffe.ru, bazhnil.ivom@mail.ioffe.ru
PDF
This review is devoted to the mechanisms of Auger recombination in semiconductor nanoheterostructures. A distinctive feature of nanoheterostructures is the strong spatial heterogeneity attributable to the existence of heteroboundary. Heteroboundaries have a fundamental effect on the amount of energy and on the behavior of charge carrier wave functions in quantum-dimensional heterostructures and, as shown in this review, significantly affect the macroscopic properties of semiconductor nanostructures. The presence of a heterogeneous boundary affects the electron-electron (hole-hole) interaction in quantum structures, and this effect is fundamental. The heteroboundary removes the restrictions imposed on interelectronic collision processes by the laws of conservation of energy and momentum, which leads to the appearance of thresholdless, temperature-weakly dependent Auger recombination channels. This review studies the main mechanisms of Auger recombination of nonequilibrium charge carriers in semiconductor heterostructures with quantum wells (Part 1), quantum filaments, and quantum dots (Part 2). It is shown that there are three fundamentally different Auger recombination mechanisms: thresholdless, quasi-threshold, and threshold. The rate of the thresholdless process is weakly dependent on temperature. The threshold energy of the quasi-threshold process significantly depends on the width of the quantum well and is close to zero for narrow quantum wells. It is shown that thresholdless and quasi-threshold Auger processes prevail in narrow quantum wells, while thresholdless and quasi-threshold Auger processes prevail in wide quantum wells. A critical width of the quantum well has been found at which the quasi-threshold Auger recombination channel transforms into a three-dimensional threshold Auger process. The influence of phonons on Auger recombination processes in quantum wells is also analyzed. It is shown that for narrow quantum wells, the Auger process involving phonons becomes resonant, which leads to an increase in the Auger recombination coefficient involving phonons. The effect of relaxation processes on Auger recombination mechanisms in homogeneous semiconductors is considered separately. It is shown that taking into account relaxation processes leads to the removal of the energy threshold for Auger recombination processes. Keywords: semiconductor heterostructures, quantum wells, quantum filaments, quantum dots, heterogeneity, Auger recombination, microscopic theory.
  1. V.N. Abakumov, V.I. Perel, I.N. Yassievich. Bezyzluchatel'naya rekombinaciya v poluprovodnikah (PIYAF im. B.P. Konstantinova, SPb., 1997). (in Russian)
  2. P.T. Landsberg. Recombination in Semiconductors (Cambridge University Press, 1991)
  3. P.V. Auger. C. R. Acad Sci.: Paris, 180, 65 (1925)
  4. Z.N. Sokolova. Teoriya mezhzonnoj ozhe-rekombinacii v pryamozonnyh poluprovodnikah: avtoref. dis. kand. fiz.-mat. nauk (FTI im. A.F. Ioffe, L., 1982). (in Russian)
  5. A. Polkovnikov, G. Zegrya. Phys. Rev. B, 64 (7), 073205 (2001)
  6. G.G. Zegrya, V.I. Perel. Osnovy fiziki poluprovodnikov (Fizmatlit, M., 2009). (in Russian)
  7. A.R. Beattie, P.T. Landsberg. Proc. Roy. Soc., A249 (1256), 16 (1959)
  8. M.P. Mikhailova, A.A. Rogachev, I.N. Yassievich. FTP, 10, 1460 (1976). (in Russian)
  9. M.P. Mikhailova, A.A. Rogachev, I.N. Yassievich. FTP, 11, 1882 (1977). (in Russian)
  10. B.L. Helmont. JETF, 75 (8), 536 (1978). (in Russian)
  11. R.I. Taylor, R.A. Abram. Semicond. Sci. Technol., 3 (9), 859 (1988)
  12. P. Roussignol, M. Kull, D. Ricard, F. de Rougemont, R. Frey, C. Flytzanis. Appl. Phys. Lett., 51 (23), 1882 (1987)
  13. G.G. Zegrya, V.A. Kharchenko. JETF, 101 (1), 327 (1992). (in Russian)
  14. R.I. Taylor, R.A. Abram, M.G. Burt, C. Smith. Semicond. Sci. Technol., 5 (1), 90 (1990)
  15. M.I. Dyakonov, V.Yu. Kachorovskii. Phys. Rev. B, 49 (24), 17130 (1994)
  16. G.G. Zegrya, A.D. Andreev, N.A. Gun'ko, E.V. Frolushkina. Proc. SPIE, 2399, 307 (1995)
  17. I.V. Kudryashov, G.G. Zegrya, V.P. Evtikhiev, V.E. Tokranov. in the collection: Compound Semiconductors (ISCS-23) 23th Int. Phys. Conf. (St. Peterburg, Russia, September 23--27 1996), 155, Chap. 10, p. 795
  18. E.O. Kane. J. Phys. Chem. Sol., 1, 249 (1957)
  19. P.C. Sercel, K.J. Vahala. Phys. Rev. B, 42, 3690 (1990)
  20. R.A. Suris. FTP, 20 (11), 2008 (1986). (in Russian)
  21. M.G. Burt. J. Phys.: Condens. Matter., 4, 6651 (1992)
  22. B.A. Foreman. Phys. Rev. B, 49, 1757 (1994)
  23. G.L. Bir, G.E. Pikus. Simmetriya i deformatsionnye effekty v poluprovodnikakh. (M., Nauka, 1972). (in Russian)
  24. L.D. Landau, E.M. Lifshitz. Kvantovaya mekhanika. Nerelyativistkaya teoriya (Nauka, M., 1989). (in Russian)
  25. H.L. Wang, M.J. Freeman, D.G. Steel, R. Craig, D.R. Scifres. Optics Lett., 18 (24), 2141 (1995)
  26. A. Haug. J. Phys. C: Solid State Phys., 16, 4159 (1983)
  27. G.P. Agrawal, N.X. Dutta. Long-Wavelength Semiconductor Lasers (Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, N.Y., 1993)
  28. A. Haug. Appl. Phys. A, 51, 354 (1990)
  29. A. Haug. J. Phys. Chem. Solids., 49 (6), 599 (1988)
  30. A.S. Polkovnikov, G.G. Zegrya. Phys. Rev. B, 58 (7), 4039 (1998)
  31. B.K. Ridley. J. Phys. C: Solid State Phys., 15 (28), 5899 (1982)
  32. G.G. Zegrya. In: Antimonide-Related Strained-Layer Heterostructures, (Gordon and Breach, Amsterdam, 1997) v. 3
  33. S. Ideshita, A. Furukawa, Y. Mochizuki, M. Mizuta. Appl. Phys. Lett., 60 (20), 2549 (1992)
  34. M. Sweeny, J. Xu. Appl. Phys. Lett., 54, 546 (1989)
  35. E.P. O'Reilly, M. Silver. Appl. Phys. Lett., 63 (24), 3318 (1993)
  36. E.P. O'Reilly, A.R. Adams. IEEE J. Quant. Electron., 30 (2), 366 (1994)
  37. V.Ya. Aleshkin, A.A. Dubinov, V.V. Rumyantsev. J. Appl. Phys., 138, 135702 (2025)
  38. Chee-Keong Tan, Wei Sun, Jonathan J. Wierer jr., Nelson Tansu. AIP Advances, 7, 035212 (2017)
  39. T. Langer, Al. Chernikov, D. Kalincev, M. Gerhard, H. Bremers, U. Rossow, M. Koch, A. Hangleiter. Appl. Phys. Lett., 103, 202106 (2013)
  40. R.M. Barrett, J.M. McMahon, R. Ahumada-Lazo, J.A. Alanis, P. Parkinson, S. Schulz, M.J. Kappers, R.A. Oliver, D. Binks. ACS Photonics, 10, 2632 (2023)
  41. T.D. Eales, I.P. Marko1, A.R. Adams, J.R. Meyer, I. Vurgaftman, S.J. Sweeney. J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys., 54, 055105 (2021)
  42. V.Ya. Aleshkin, V.V. Rumyantsev, K.E. Kudryavtsev, A.A. Dubinov, V.V. Utochkin, M.A. Fadeev, G. Alymov, N.N. Mikhailov, S.A. Dvoretsky, F. Teppe, V.I. Gavrilenko, S.V. Morozov. J. Appl. Phys., 129, 133106 (2021)
  43. K.E. Kudryavtsev, A.A. Yantser, M.A. Fadeev, V.V. Rumyantsev, A.A. Dubinov, V.Ya. Aleshkin, N.N. Mikhailov, S.A. Dvoretsky, V.I. Gavrilenko, S.V. Morozov. Appl. Phys. Lett., 123, 18 (2013).
Publisher:

Ioffe Institute

Institute Officers:

Director: Sergei V. Ivanov

Contact us:

26 Polytekhnicheskaya, Saint Petersburg 194021, Russian Federation
Fax: +7 (812) 297 1017
Phone: +7 (812) 297 2245
E-mail: post@mail.ioffe.ru