Auger-Meitner Recombination in Semiconductors from First Principles*

Auger-Meitner recombination (AMR) is an intrinsic, non-radiative recombination process that affects device performance in applications such as light emitting diodes and solar cells. Unfortunately, studying the contributions from direct and phonon-assisted mechanisms is challenging experimentally. To this end we have developed a computational methodology and software to calculate the AMR coefficients from first principles, enabling the focused study and analysis of both direct and phonon-assisted AMR in bulk semiconductor materials. We apply different parallelization schemes for the various AMR mechanisms, enabling efficient AMR calculations for any bulk semiconductor. We have demonstrated the utility of our methodology in recent studies of silicon,[1,2] indium phosphide, and AlGaN, providing previously inaccessible insights into the AMR mechanisms in these important semiconducting materials.

 

[1] Phys. Rev. Lett. 131, 076902 (2023)

[2] arXiv:2309:09927 (2023)