Model of temperature quenching of photoluminescence in disordered semiconductors and comparison to experiment

A phenomenological model is suggested to describe nonradiative recombination of optical excitations in disordered semiconductor heterostructures. The general property of disordered materials is a strong decay of the photoluminescence intensity with rising temperature. We show that this temperature dependence is a consequence of the interplay between radiative and nonradiative recombination and hopping dynamics of excitations in the manifold of localized states created by disorder potential. The dynamics is studied by kinetic Monte Carlo simulations. Experimental data on the thermal quenching of the photoluminescence intensity in (GaIn)(NAs)∕GaAs and Ga(NAsP)∕GaP quantum wells are presented, which are in good agreement with the theoretical results.