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Unveiling the Root Cause of the Efficiency-Lifetime Trade-Off in Blue Fluorescent Organic Light-Emitting Diodes

  • Original Article - Electronics, Magnetics and Photonics
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Abstract

The origin of efficiency-lifetime trade-off in triplet–triplet fusion (TTF) type blue fluorescent organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) was investigated and the device structure to resolve the issue was developed. The efficiency and lifetime were simultaneously improved in the blue OLEDs by developing a multilayer hole transport stack which can adjust carrier densities and recombination zone in the emitting layer (EML). It was found that electron leakage from EML and high spatial density of excitons in the vicinity of the electron blocking layer for high TTF rates by narrow recombination zone are the detrimental factors for efficiency-lifetime trade-off. A multilayer hole transport stack employing a deep highest occupied molecular orbital hole transport layer and an electron blocking layer combined with an appropriate hole blocking layer simultaneously improved the power efficiency by 16% at 500 cd/m2 and lifetime by almost 100% (from 73 h up to 145 h). In addition, the low efficiency in the low luminance region was also completely controlled, resulting in negligible efficiency variation in the entire luminance range.

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Acknowledgement

This work was supported by National Research Foundation (NRF) Grants funded by the Korean Government (2019R1F1A1061080 and NRF-2019M3D1A2104068).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Display Research Center, Samsung Display Co, 1 Samsung-ro, Gihueng-gu, Yongin, 17113, Gyeonggi, Republic of Korea

    Sunwoo Kang & Taekyung Kim

  2. School of Chemical Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, 2066, Seobu-ro, Jangan-gu, Suwon, Gyeonggi, 16419, Republic of Korea

    Jun Yeob Lee

  3. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Hongik University, Sejongsi, 30016, Republic of Korea

    Taekyung Kim

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  1. Sunwoo Kang
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  2. Jun Yeob Lee
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Correspondence to Taekyung Kim.

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Kang, S., Lee, J.Y. & Kim, T. Unveiling the Root Cause of the Efficiency-Lifetime Trade-Off in Blue Fluorescent Organic Light-Emitting Diodes. Electron. Mater. Lett. 16, 1–8 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13391-019-00180-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13391-019-00180-5

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