A light emitting heterostructure and/or device in which the light generating structure is contained within a potential well is provided. The potential well is configured to contain electrons, holes, and/or electron and hole pairs within the light generating structure. A phonon engineering approach can be used in which a band structure of the potential well and/or light generating structure is designed to facilitate the emission of polar optical phonons by electrons entering the light generating structure. To this extent, a difference between an energy at a top of the potential well and an energy of a quantum well in the light generating structure can be resonant with an energy of a polar optical phonon in the light generating structure material. The energy of the quantum well can comprise an energy at the top of the quantum well, an electron ground state energy, and/or the like.