Despite the significant progress that has been made in recent years in improving the performance of quantum dot light-emitting devices (QLEDs), the effect of charge imbalance and excess carriers on excitons in red (R) vs green (G) vs blue (B) QLEDs has not been compared or systematically studied. In this work we study the effect of changing the electron (e)/hole (h) supply ratio in the QDs emissive layer (EML) in CdSe-based R-, G-, and B-QLEDs with inverted structure in order to identify the type of excess carriers and investigate their effect on the electroluminescence performance of QLEDs of each color. Results show that in R-QLEDs, the e/h ratio in the EML is >1, whereas in G- and B-QLEDs, the e/h ratio is <1 with charge balance conditions being significantly worse in the case of B-QLEDs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study investigates the impact of an engineered hole transport layer (HTL) on the stability of electroluminescent quantum dot light-emitting devices (QDLEDs). The 9-Phenyl-3,6-bis(9-phenyl-9Hcarbazol-3-yl)-9H-carbazole (Tris-PCz) HTL, which possesses a shallower lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) energy level compared to the widely used 4,4'-bis(N-carbazolyl)-1,1'-biphenyl (CBP) HTL, is employed to confine electron overflow toward the HTL. Utilizing the Tris-PCz HTL results in a 20× improvement in the electroluminescence half-life (LT50) of QDLEDs compared with conventional QDLEDs using the CBP HTL.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEncapsulating blue quantum dot light-emitting devices (QLEDs) using an ultraviolet curable resin is known to lead to a significant increase in their efficiency. Some of this efficiency increase occurs immediately, whereas some of it proceeds over a period of time, typically over several tens of hours following the encapsulation, a behavior commonly referred to as positive aging. The root causes of this positive aging, especially in blue QLEDs, remain not well understood.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDespite its benefits for facilitating device fabrication, utilization of a polymeric hole transport layer (HTL) in inverted quantum dots (QDs) light-emitting devices (IQLEDs) often leads to poor device performance. In this work, we find that the poor performance arises primarily from electron leakage, inefficient charge injection, and significant exciton quenching at the HTL interface in the inverted architecture and not due to solvent damage effects as is widely believed. We also find that using a layer of wider band gap QDs as an interlayer (IL) in between the HTL and the main QDs' emission material layer (EML) can facilitate hole injection, suppress electron leakage, and reduce exciton quenching, effectively mitigating the poor interface effects and resulting in high electroluminescence performance.
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