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A comprehensive three-dimensional analysis of the operation of an In 0.4 Ga 0.6 N / GaN nanocolumn lightemitting diode is presented. Focus is put on the investigation of the nature and location of the emitting states. Calculations of strain and polarization-induced internal fields show that the strong lateral dependence of the potential gives rise to states confined to the periphery and to the center of the nanocolumn. However, lateral confinement of states near the column center is weak such that a quantum-well-like treatment of the remaining bound states seems appropriate where coherence is lost in the lateral directions. Within this picture, a coupled and self-consistent three-dimensional simulation of carrier transport and luminescence is presented, thus accounting for screening and lateral transport effects. Results are compared to a planar quantum-well device.

Computer simulation of microscopic transport and light emission in semiconductor nanostructures is often restricted to an isolated system of a single quantum well, wire or dot. In this work we report on the development of a simulator for devices with various kinds of nanostructures which exhibit quantization in different dimensionalities. Our approach is based upon the partition of the carrier densities within each quantization region into bound and unbound populations. A bound carrier is treated fully coherent in the directions of confinement, whereas it is assumed to be totally incoherent with a motion driven by classical drift and diffusion in the remaining directions. Coupling of the populations takes place through electrostatics and carrier capture. We illustrate the applicability of our approach with a wellwire structure.

The k · p envelope function method is a popular tool for the study of electronic properties of III-V nanostructures. The equations are usually transferred to real-space and solved using standard numerical techniques. The powerful and flexible finite element method was seldom employed due to problems with spurious solutions. The method would be favorable for the calculation of electronic properties of large strained nanostructures as it allows a flexible representation of complex geometries. In this paper, we show our consistent implementation of the k · p envelope equations for nanostructures of any dimensionality. By including BurtForeman operator ordering and ensuring the ellipticity of the equations, we are able to calculate reliable and spurious solution free subband structures for the standard k·p 4×4, 6×6 and 8×8 models for zinc-blende and wurtzite crystals. We further show how to consistently include strain effects up to second order by means of the Pikus-Bir transformation. Finally, we analyze the performance of our implementation using benchmark examples.