Emission from outside of the emission layer in state-of-the-art phosphorescent organic light-emitting diodes

The emission zone profile in an organic light-emitting diode was extracted by fitting the experimentally measured far-field angular electroluminescence spectrum of a purposely designed device. It is based on a thin 10 nm emission layer doped with the red emitting phosphor Ir(MDQ)2acac. We find strong indications for light emission originating from outside of the emission layer, even though the device has electron and hole blocking layers. These are commonly assumed to completely confine the charge carrier recombination and hence the light emission to the emission layer. Since the calculated internal spectrum of the emission matches the emitter photoluminescence spectrum well, diffusion of the emitter molecules outside of the emission layer is hypothesized

Plasmonic Purcell effect reveals obliquely ordered phosphorescent emitters in Organic LEDs

The non-isotropic alignment of molecules can increase the interaction efficiency with propagating light fields. This applies to both emissive and absorptive systems and can be exploited for achieving unprecedented efficiencies of organic opto-electronic devices such as organic light-emitting diodes. Optical analysis has revealed certain phosphorescent emitters to align spontaneously in an advantageous orientation. Unfortunately, established approaches only determine an average orientation because emission patterns solely depend on the second moments of the transition dipole vector distribution. In order to resolve further details of such a distribution, additional differences in the emission characteristics of parallel and perpendicularly oriented emitters need to be introduced. A thin metal layer near the emitters introduces plasmon mediated losses mostly for perpendicular emitters. Then, analyzing the emission at different polarizations allows one to measure emission lifetimes of mostly parallel or mostly perpendicular oriented emitters. This should alter the transient emission when observing the temporal phosphorescence decay under different directions and/or polarizations. The angular width of the orientation distribution can be derived from the degree of such lifetime splitting. Our results suggest a narrow but obliquely oriented molecular ensemble of Ir(MDQ)2(acac) doped into the α-NPD host inside an Organic LED stack

Comprehensive efficiency analysis of organic light-emitting diodes featuring emitter orientation and triplet-to-singlet up-conversion

We present a method to achieve a consistent, comprehensive efficiency analysis of fluorescent organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) showing non-isotropic emitter orientation and triplet-to-singlet up-conversion. Combining photoluminescence lifetime and external quantum efficiency measurements on OLEDs with varying cavity length allows for an independent determination of the radiative emitter efficiency under optical as well as electrical excitation. The difference clearly shows a significant enhancement of the singlet exciton fraction to more than 25% under electrical operation. Furthermore, the presented method does not require detailed information about the emitting system and is generally applicable for a comprehensive efficiency analysis of bottom-emitting OLEDs