Efficient and bright polymer light emitting field effect transistors

Light emitting field effect transistors (LEFETs) are emerging as a multi-functional class of optoelectronic devices. LEFETs can simultaneously execute light emission and the standard logic functions of a transistor in a single architecture. However, current LEFET architectures deliver either high brightness or high efficiency but not both concurrently, thus limiting their use in technological applications. Here we show an LEFET device strategy that simultaneously improves brightness and efficiency. The key step change in LEFET performance arises from the bottom gate top-contact device architecture in which the source/drain electrodes are semitransparent and the active channel contains a bi-layer comprising of a high mobility charge-transporting polymer, and a yellow–green emissive polymer. A record external quantum efficiency (EQE) of 2.1% at 1000 cd/m² is demonstrated for polymer based bilayer LEFETs.     

Organic light-emitting diode-based plausibly physiologically-friendly low color-temperature night light

Light sources with lower color temperature (CT) show markedly less suppression effect on the secretion of melatonin, an oncostatic hormone. Light sources with higher color rendering index (CRI) provide better visual comfort. In this report, we demonstrate the design and fabrication of low CT, high CRI fluorescent organic light-emitting diode (OLED) with five-band emitting from a single emissive layer. The best performed device exhibits a CT of 1773 K, much lower than that of candles (1800–2000 K) or incandescent bulbs (2000–2500 K), 87 CRI, a beyond theoretical limit external quantum efficiency (EQE) 6.4%, and 11.9 lm/W at 100 cd/m². One major reason for having the ultra-low CT and relative high CRI may be attributed to the significantly intensive deep red emission. The comparatively high efficacy and EQE may be attributed to the employment of a smooth stepwise energy-level structure, enabling low injection barriers and balance carrier injection.     

Cadmium-free quantum dots based violet light-emitting diodes: High-efficiency and brightness via optimization of organic hole transport layers

Bright and efficient violet quantum dot (QD) based light-emitting diodes (QD-LEDs) with heavy-metal-free ZnSe/ZnS have been demonstrated by choosing different hole transport layers, including poly(4-butyl-phenyl-diphenyl-amine) (poly-TPD), poly[9,9-dioctylfluorene-co-N-[4-(3-methylpropyl)]-diphenylamine] (TFB), and poly-N-vinylcarbazole (PVK). Violet QD-LEDs with maximum luminance of about 930 cd/m², the maximum current efficiency of 0.18 cd/A, and the peak EQE of 1.02% when poly-TPD was used as HTL. Higher brightness and low turn-on voltage (3.8 V) violet QD-LEDs could be fabricated when TFB was used as hole transport material. Although the maximum luminance could reach up to 2691 cd/m², the devices exhibited only low current efficiency (∼0.51 cd/A) and EQE (∼2.88%). If PVK is used as hole transport material, highly efficient violet QD-LEDs can be fabricated with lower maximum luminance and higher turn-on voltages compared with counterpart using TFB. Therefore, TFB and PVK mixture in a certain proportion has been used as HTL, turn-on voltage, brightness, and efficiency all have been improved greatly. The QD-LEDs is fabricated with 7.39% of EQE and 2856 cd/m² of maximum brightness with narrow FWHM less than 21 nm. These results represent significant improvements in the performance of heavy-metal-free violet QD-LEDs in terms of efficiency, brightness, and color purity.     

High-performance azure blue quantum dot light-emitting diodes via doping PVK in emitting layer

Highly bright and efficient azure blue quantum dot-based light-emitting diodes (QD-LEDs) have been demonstrated by employing ZnCdSe core/multishell QDs as emitters and the crucial development we report here is the ability to dramatically enhance the efficiency and brightness through doping poly vinyl(N-carbazole) (PVK) in the emissive layer to balance the charge injection. The best device displays remarkable features like maximum luminance of 13,800 cd/m², luminous efficiency of 6.41 cd/A, and external quantum efficiency (EQE) of 8.76%, without detectable red-shift and broadening in electroluminescence (EL) spectra with increasing voltage as well as good spectral matching between photoluminescence (PL) and EL. Such azure blue quantum-dot LEDs show a 140% increase in external quantum efficiency compared with QD-LEDs without PVK. More important, the peak efficiency of the QD-LEDs with PVK dopant is achieved at luminance of about 1000 cd/m², and high efficiency (EQE > 8%) can be maintained with brightness ranging from 200 to 2400 cd/m². There are two main aspects of the role of PVK in the proposed system. Firstly, the lower HOMO of PVK than (poly[9,9-dioctylfluorene-co-N-[4-(3-methylpropyl)]-diphenylamine] (TFB) can reduce the potential barrier for 0.4 eV at the interface of QDs and hole transport layer which could result in higher hole injection efficiency along with good EQE as compared to TFB-only HTLs. Secondly, with PVK acting as buffer layer of TFB and QDs, the exciton energy transfer from the organic host to the QDs can be effectively improved.     

OLEDs with chromaticity tunable between dusk-hue and candle-light

We demonstrate in this report the feasibility of using organic light-emitting diode (OLED) lighting device technology to fabricate light sources with chromaticity tunable between that of dusk-hue and candle-light. The resulting color temperature is tunable easily from 1580 K to 2600 K, covering that of dusk-hue (2500 K) and candle-light (1900 K) and providing a physiologically-friendly, melatonin suppression-less emission for illumination at night, along with a respective color rendering index varying from 68 to 91 and power efficiency from 20.9 to 2.7 lm/W at 10 to 23,690 cd/m². The color temperature can also be tuned from high to low sequentially, such as from 5200 K to 2360 K, covering that of cool- and warm-white light for daytime illumination, by simply varying emissive layer thickness ratio. The comparatively high color rendering index as well as the large color temperature span and easy color temperature tunability may be attributed to the employment of four blackbody radiation-complementary emitters. The emission ranges from red to sky-blue, which were dispersed into three separated emissive layers coupling with the use of a nano-layer of hole modulation material.     

High-efficiency low color temperature organic light emitting diodes with solution-processed emissive layer

Low color temperature (CT) lighting provides a warm and comfortable atmosphere and shows mild effect on melatonin suppression. A high-efficiency low CT organic light emitting diode can be easily fabricated by spin coating a single white emission layer. The resultant white device shows an external quantum efficiency (EQE) of 22.8% (34.9 lm/W) with CT 2860 K at 100 cd/m², while is shown 18.8% (24.5 lm/W) at 1000 cd/m². The high efficiency may be attributed to the use of electroluminescence efficient materials and the ambipolar-transport host. Besides, proper device architecture design enables excitons to form on the host and allows effective energy transfer from host to guest or from high triplet guest to low counterparts. By decreasing the doping concentration of blue dye in the white emission layer, the device exhibited an orange emission with a CT of 2280 K. An EQE improvement was observed for the device, whose EQE was 27.4% (38.8 lm/W) at 100 cd/m² and 20.4% (24.6 lm/W) at 1000 cd/m².     

High efficiency and non-color-changing orange organic light emitting diodes with red and green emitting layers

We report a high performance orange organic light-emitting diode (OLED) where red and green phosphorescent dyes are doped in an exciplex forming co-host as separate red and green emitting layers (EMLs). The OLED shows a maximum external quantum efficiency (EQE) of 22.8%, a low roll-off of efficiency with an EQE of 19.6% at 10,000 cd/m², and good orange color with a CIE coordinate of (0.442, 0.529) and no color change from 1000 to 10,000 cd/m². The exciplex forming co-host system distributes the recombination zone all over the EMLs and reduces the triplet exciton quenching processes.     

Orange phosphorescent organic light-emitting diodes with high operational stability

In this article we report on the performances of phosphorescent orange organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) having a high operational stability. The fabricated devices all consist of a “hybrid” structure, where the hole-injection layer was processed from solution, while the rest of the organic materials were deposited by vacuum thermal evaporation. A device stack having an emissive layer comprising a carbazole-based host TCzMe doped with the orange phosphor tris(2-phenylquinoline)iridium(III) [Ir(2-phq)₃] shows improved efficiencies compared to a the same device with the standard N,N′-bis(naphthalen-1-yl)-N,N′-bis(phenyl)-benzidine (NPB) as host material. External quantum efficiency (EQE) up to 7.4% and a power efficiency of 16 lm/W were demonstrated using TCzMe. Most importantly, the operational stability of the device was largely improved, resulting in extrapolated values reaching lifetimes well above 100,000 h at initial luminance of 1000 Cd/m².     

Stressing organic light-emitting diode under constant-brightness driving mode

The degradation of the organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) was studied under the constant-brightness driving mode. The time-dependent current exhibits a long period of linear increase followed by an exponential increase before the eventually catastrophic failure featured by a vertical increase. A new lifetime T_th is defined as the time for the device to reach the end of the linear increase stage. Similar to the well-known relation between the lifetime and the brightness in the constant-current driving mode, the lifetime and the brightness in the constant-brightness driving mode also fit the formula Lⁿ × T_th = Const., where L is the brightness and n is the acceleration exponent. By examining the current density–voltage–luminance characteristics and the photoluminescence intensity of the devices before and after the stress, it is found that both the reduction of the charge injection efficiency, and the loss of the emissive centers, contribute to the OLEDs’ degradation. The extra power supplied to the device to keep the brightness constant, raises the junction temperature, and eventually leads to the catastrophic failure of the devices.     

Organic photovoltaic devices based on pentacene/N,N′-dioctyl-3,4,9,10-perylenedicarboximide heterojunctions

We have studied an organic photovoltaic cell based on an efficient donor/acceptor combination of pentacene/N,N′-dioctyl-3,4,9,10-perylenedicarboximide (PTCDI-C₈) heterojunctions. Photocurrent spectra exhibited excellent light harvesting throughout the visible spectrum with maximum external quantum efficiency (EQE) of ～60%. PTCDI-C₈ layer provided significant contribution to the photocurrent due to its strong absorption properties and efficient exciton dissociation at pentacene/PTCDI-C₈ interface. Power conversion efficiency of about 1.2% has been achieved under AM 1.5 illumination. The device showed a low series resistance of 18 Ω cm² and a high shunt resistance of 2.5 kΩ cm², resulting in a high fill factor of 65%.     

Fluorene derivatives for highly efficient non-doped single-layer blue organic light-emitting diodes

Diphenylamino- and triazole-endcapped fluorene derivatives which show a wide energy band gap, a high fluorescence quantum yield and high stability have been synthesized and characterized. Single-layer electroluminescent devices of these fluorene derivatives exhibited efficient deep blue to greenish blue emission at low driving voltage. The single-layer OLED of PhN-OF(1)-TAZ shows a maximum current efficiency of 1.54 cd/A at 20 mA cm⁻² with external quantum efficiency (EQE) of 2.0% and CIE coordinates of (0.153, 0.088) in deep blue region, while the single-layer device of oligothienylfluorene PhN-OFOT-TAZ shows a maximum brightness of 7524 cd/m² and a maximum current efficiency of 2.9 cd/A with CIE coordinates of (0.20, 0.40) in greenish blue.     

High-efficiency hybrid organic–inorganic light-emitting devices

We report efficient red, orange, green and blue organic–inorganic light emitting devices using light emitting polymers and polyethylenimine ethoxylated (PEIE) interlayer with the respective luminance efficiency of 1.3, 2.7, 10 and 4.1 cd A⁻¹, which is comparable to that of the analogous conventional devices using a low work-function metal cathode. This is enabled by the enhanced electron injection due to the effective reduction of the ZnO work-function by PEIE, as well as hole/exciton-blocking function of PEIE layer. Due to the benign compatibility between PEIE and the neighboring organic layer, the novel phosphorescent organic–inorganic devices using solution-processed small molecule emissive layer show the maximum luminance efficiency of 87.6 cd A⁻¹ and external quantum efficiency of 20.9% at 1000 cd m⁻².     

Three-peak top-emitting white organic emitting diodes with wide color gamut for display application

By changing the thickness of hole transport layer to control the cavity length, a top-emitting white organic light-emitting diode (TWOLED) with three individual narrow peaks matching well with the three primary color filters has been successfully realized. It is very important to carefully design the multimode microcavity for the achievement of the three-peak spectrum. Compared with the bottom-emitting white organic light-emitting diodes (BWOLEDs), the TWOLEDs exhibit improved color purity and a wider color gamut due to the narrow emissive spectrum. The maximum current efficiency and power efficiency of TWOLED reach 28.9 cd/A and 27.5 lm/W, respectively. It is predicted that this kind of three-peak TWOLEDs is suitable for the high-quality display application.     

White emission polymer light-emitting devices with efficient electron injection from alcohol/water-soluble polymer/Al bilayer cathode

We demonstrate highly efficient white emission polymer light-emitting diodes (WPLEDs) from multilayer structure formed by solution processed technique, in which alcohol/water-soluble polymer, poly [(9,9-bis(3′-(N,N-dimethylamino)propyl)-2,7-fluorene)-alt-2,7-(9,9-dioctylfluorene)] (PFN) was incorporated as electron-injection layer and Al as cathode. It was found that the device performance was very sensitive to the solvents from solution of which the PFN electron-injection layer was cast. Devices with electron-injection layer cast from methanol solution show degraded performance while the best device performance was obtained when mixed solvent of water and methanol with ratio of 1:3 was used. We attribute the variation in device performance to washing out the electron transport material in the emissive layer due to rinse effect. As a result of alleviative loss of electron transport material in the emissive layer, the optimized device with a peak luminous efficiency of 18.5 cd A^?1 for forward-viewing was achieved, which is comparable to that of the device with same emissive layer but with low work-function metal Ba cathode (16.6 cd A^?1). White emission color with Commission International de I’Eclairage coordinates of (0.321, 0.345) at current 10 mA cm^?2 was observed.     

Improved efficiency in fluorescent blue organic light emitting diode with a carrier confining structure

A blue organic light emitting device (OLED) with improved efficiency and good color purity is reported. The highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) level of the hole transport layer (HTL) and that of the emissive layer (EML) differs by 0.3 eV. This energy level mismatch confines the carriers at the HTL/EML interface. Conventional devices have only one HTL/EML interface, with a current efficiency of 2.9 cd/A. Without adding a separate hole blocking layer, incorporating multi-layers of the same HTL and EML increases this efficiency to 5.8 cd/A, with only a small increase in operating voltage yielding increased power efficiency also. But, there are an optimum number of layers, beyond which efficiency loss results. Also, including the multilayer structure simultaneously improves the blue color co-ordinates. To gain insight into the role of multilayer structures in modifying charge transport and recombination zone a simulator was developed. The simulated results could qualitatively explain the experimental observations.     

Efficient blue organic light-emitting diodes based on triphenylimidazole substituted anthracene derivatives

A series of new blue emissive materials based on the conjugates of highly fluorescent diaryl anthracene and electron-transporting triphenylimidazole moieties: 2-(4-(anthracen-9-yl)phenyl)-1,4,5-triphenyl-1H-imidazole (ACBI), 2-(4-(10-(naphthalen-1-yl)anthracen-9-yl)phenyl)-1,4,5-triphenyl-1H-imidazole (1-NaCBI), 2-(4-(10-(naphthalen-2-yl)anthracen-9-yl)phenyl)-1,4,5-triphenyl-1H-imidazole (2-NaCBI) were designed and synthesized successfully. These materials exhibit good film-forming properties and excellent thermal stabilities. Meanwhile, the decreased π-conjugation in these compounds compared with phenanthroimidazole derivatives leads to obvious hypsochromic shift. To explore the electroluminescence properties of these materials, typical three-layer organic light-emitting devices were fabricated. With respect to the three layer device 2 using 1-NaCBI as the emitting layer, its maximum current efficiency reaches 3.06 cd A⁻¹ with Commission Internationale del’Eclairage (CIE) coordinates of (0.149, 0.092). More interestingly, sky blue doped device 5 based on 1-NaCBI achieved a maximum current efficiency of 15.53 cd A⁻¹ and a maximum external quantum efficiency of 8.15%, high EQE has been proved to be induced by the up-conversion of a triplet excited state.     

High efficiency fluorescent white organic light-emitting diodes with red,green and blue separately monochromatic emission layers

Highly efficient fluorescent white organic light-emitting diodes (WOLEDs) have been fabricated by using three red, green and blue, separately monochromatic emission layers. The red and blue emissive layers are based on 4-(dicyanomethylene)-2-tert-butyl-6-(1,1,7,7-tetramethyljulolidin-4-yl-vinyl)-4H-pyran (DCJTB) doped N,N′-di(naphthalene-1-yl)-N,N′-diphenyl-benzidine (NPB) and p-bis(p-N,N-diphenyl-amino-styryl) benzene (DSA-ph) doped 2-methyl-9,10-di(2-naphthyl) anthracene (MADN), respectively; and the green emissive layer is based on tris(8-hydroxyquionline)aluminum(Alq₃) doped with 10-(2-benzothiazolyl)-2,3,6,7-tetrahydro-1,1,7,7-tetramethyl-1H,5H,1[H-(1)-benzopyropyrano(6,7-8-i,j)quinolizin-1]-one (C545T), which is sandwiched between the red and the blue emissive layers. It can be seen that the devices show stable white emission with Commission International de L’Eclairage coordinates of (0.41, 0.41) and color rendering index (CRI) of 84 in a wide range of bias voltages. The maximum power efficiency, current efficiency and quantum efficiency reach 15.9 lm/W, 20.8 cd/A and 8.4%, respectively. The power efficiency at brightness of 500 cd/m² still arrives at 7.9 lm/W, and the half-lifetime under the initial luminance of 500 cd/m² is over 3500 h.     

Cyclopenta[def]fluorene based high triplet energy hole transport material for blue phosphorescent organic light-emitting diodes

A cyclopenta[def]fluorene based high triplet energy hole transport material was synthesized as a thermally stable hole transport material for blue phosphorescent organic light-emitting diodes. The cyclopentafluorene type hole transport material showed a high glass transition temperature of 143 °C, high triplet energy of 2.81 eV and the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital of 2.10 eV for electron blocking in blue phosphorescent organic light-emitting diodes. The cyclopentafluorene type hole transport material improved the external quantum efficiency of blue phosphorescent organic light-emitting diodes.     

Highly enhanced light extraction from organic light emitting diodes with little image blurring and good color stability

We report a highly enhanced light extraction from a top emission organic light emitting diode with little image blurring and color variation with viewing angle. Direct integration of a high refractive index micro lens array on the top of the transparent indium zinc oxide top electrode of a green phosphorescent OLED showed a significant enhancement of light extraction to get EQE of 44.7% from 27.6%, the power efficiency of 134.7 lm/w from 85.9 lm/W and the current efficiency of 217.2 cd/A from 120.7 cd/A without image blurring. In addition, the device showed excellent color stability on viewing angle with Commission Internationale de l’Eclairage (CIE) coordinate of Δx = 0.01, Δy = 0.01 as the viewing angle varied from 0° to 60°.     

High-efficiency fluorescent white organic light-emitting device with double emissive layers

The authors demonstrate a fluorescent white organic light-emitting device (WOLED) with double emissive layers. The yellow and blue dyes, 5,6,11,12-tetraphenylnaphthacene and N-(4-((E)-2-(6-((E)-4-(diphenylamino)styryl)naphthalen-2-yl)vinyl)phenyl)-N-phenylbenzenamine, are doping into the same conductive host material, N,N′-dicarbazolyl-4-4′-biphenyl). The maximum luminance and power efficiency of the WOLED are 14.6 cd/A and 9.5 lm/W at 0.01 mA/cm², with the maximum brightness of 20 100 cd/m² at 17.8 V. The Commission International de L’Éclairage coordinates change slightly from (0.27, 0.37) to (0.28, 0.36), as the applied voltage increases from 6 V to 16 V. The high efficiencies can be attributed to the balance between holes and electrons.