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Direct and phonon-assisted (PA) indirect Auger and radiative recombination lifetime in HgCdTe, InAsSb, and InGaAs is calculated and compared under different lattice temperatures and doping concentrations. Using the Green's function theory, the electron self energy computed from the electron-phonon interaction is incorporated into the quantum-mechanical expressions of Auger and radiative recombination, which renders the corresponding minority carrier lifetime in the materials due to both direct and PA indirect processes. Specifically, the results of two pairs of materials, namely, InAs0.91Sb0.09, Hg0.67Cd0.33Te and In0.53Ga0.47As, Hg0.38Cd0.62Te with cutoff wavelengths of 4 µm and 1.7 µm at 200 K and 300 K, respectively, are presented. It is shown that for InAs0.91Sb0.09 and Hg0.67Cd0.33Te, when the lattice temperature falls below 250 K the radiative process becomes the limiting factor of carrier lifetime in both materials at an n-type doping of 1015cm-3, while at a constant temperature of 200 K, a high n-type doping (ND > 5 x 1015cm-3 for InAs0.91Sb0.09 and 3 x 1015cm-3 for Hg0.67Cd0.33Te) makes the Auger process dominate. For the Auger lifetime in In0.53Ga0.47As and Hg0.38Cd0.62Te, the calculation suggested that under all the temperatures and n-doping concentrations investigated in this paper, radiative process is always the limiting factor of the materials' minority carrier lifetime. The calculation of the PA indirect Auger process in the four materials further demonstrated its indispensable contribution to the materials' total Auger rate especially at low temperature, which is necessary to reproduce some experimental data. By fitting the Beattie-Landsberg-Blakemore (BLB) formula to the numerical Auger results, the corresponding overlap integral factors |F1F2| in BLB theory are evaluated and presented to facilitate fast and accurate Auger calculations in the IR detector simulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The potential applications of germanium and its alloys in infrared silicon-based photonics have led to a renewed interest in their optical properties. In this letter, we report on the numerical determination of Auger coefficients at T=300K for relaxed and biaxially strained germanium. We use a Green's function based model that takes into account all relevant direct and phononassisted processes and perform calculations up to a strain level corresponding to the transition from indirect to direct energy gap. We have considered excess carrier concentrations ranging from 1016 cm-3 to 5×1019 cm-3. For use in device level simulations, we also provide fitting formulas for the calculated electron and hole Auger coefficients as functions of carrier density. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The intrinsic carrier recombination lifetime in relaxed and strained InAs1-xSbx alloys is investigated using the full-band Green's function theory. By computing the phonon-perturbed electron self-energy of the system, both direct and phonon-assisted indirect Auger and radiative processes are studied as functions of antimony molar fractions, lattice temperatures and applied in-plane biaxial strains. To improve the overall accuracy of the calculation, an empirical pseudopotential band structure for the alloy is also fitted to the measured band extrema and effective masses under different biaxial strains. A set of effective screened potentials valid for all the needed antimony fractions x and biaxial strains ε, therefore, is obtained and applied to the calculation. The results showed reduced total Auger recombination rates and enhanced radiative recombination rates in InAsSb alloys at room temperature when a compressive strain is applied. Furthermore, the study on the widely employed mid-wavelength infrared detector material, InAs0.91Sb0.09, strained by an InAs substrate, demonstrated that much longer minority carrier lifetime can be achieved compared to that in the lattice-matched situation when the lattice temperature is above 200 K. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]