Accepted for publication in Optical aŶd QuaŶtuŵ ElectroŶics ϰϱ;ϭϮͿ, ϮϬϭϯ DOI 10.1007/s11082-013-9820-z Modeling of color-coded III-nitride LED structures with deep quantum wells Mikhail V. Kisin * and Hussein S. El-Ghoroury Ostendo Technologies Inc., 6185 Paseo del Norte, Carlsbad, CA, USA 92011 (*author for correspondence: E-mail: mikhail@ostendo.com) Abstract. We present, to the best of our knowledge, the first successful simulation of color-coded III- nitride light-emitting diodes (LEDs) incorporating in their active regions shallow and deep InGaN quantum wells (QWs). Dichromatic violet-aquamarine semipolar LEDs grown in Ga-polar and N-polar crystallographic orientations (Y. Kawaguchi et.al., APL 100, 231110, 2012) were used as an experimental benchmark. Opposite interface polarization charges in Ga-polar and N-polar LEDs provide different conditions for carrier transport and account for different shape of color-coded emission spectra. To reproduce experimentally observed trends, several effects specific for deep III-nitride QWs were essential in our modeling including (i) strongly non-equilibrium character of active QW populations, (ii) dynamic carrier overshoot of narrow QW layers, and (iii) Auger-assisted QW depopulation. Key words: LED, MQW, color-coded structure, inhomogeneous injection, Auger recombination The final publication is available at link.springer.com: DOI 10.1007/s11082-013-9820-z 1. Introduction Color-coded multiple quantum well (MQW) structures are often used in LED characterization to diagnose the effects of inhomogeneous carrier injection across the device active region (Liu et al. 2008; Charash et al. 2009; Peter et al. 2009; Galler et al. 2011; Liu et al. 2012; Matsui et al. 2013). However, only the trivial effect of the p-side QW emission dominance in monochromatic III-nitride LEDs has been reliably reproduced by numerical simulation (Domen et al. 1998; Mymrin et al. 2005; Kisin and El-Ghoroury 2010; Meneghini et al. 2013). MQW color-coded structures demonstrate widely diverse injection scenarios strongly affected by MQW active region layout, i.e. variance in QW depths, numbers, and relative locations (Charash et al. 2009; Peter et al. 2009; Galler et al. 2011; Liu et al. 2012), intermediate barrier widths and doping (Liu et al. 2008; Huang et al. 2011; Matsui et al. 2013), and overall crystallographic orientation (Kawaguchi et al. 2012). Complexity of the involved physical phenomena makes the modeling of color-coded LEDs challenging. In this work, we present simulation of dichromatic two-QW LEDs combining in the same active region a shallow violet-emitting QW and a relatively deep aquamarine-emitting QW. Even for such a simple layout, in order to reproduce the experimentally observed spectra we had to complement the common drift-diffusion (DD) transport model with several specific III-nitrides features taking into account that (i) active QW populations are strongly off-balanced from corresponding mobile carrier subsystems,