Impurity Auger recombination in gallium nitride from first principles

Auger recombination is a nonradiative recombination mechanism in which the annihilation of an electron and a hole results in excitation of a third carrier to an excited state.  Direct and indirect Auger recombination in the bulk of a material is known to limit the performance of optoelectronic devices. Impurity Auger recombination, in which the recombination involves defects or impurities in the material, may also be important, but first-principles studies of it are lacking. Such a process has been suggested to occur in gallium nitride, which is an essential semiconductor material for applications including blue light emitting diodes (LEDs) and power electronics. Using our first-principles methodology, we calculate the impurity Auger rate for select impurities in gallium nitride and study its impact on efficiency of gallium-nitride-based LEDs.