245\u2009MHz bandwidth organic light-emitting diodes used in a gigabit optical wireless data link

Kou Yoshida,Pavlos P Manousiadis,Malte C Gather,Ifor D W Samuel,Harald Haas,Zhe Chen,Graham A Turnbull,Caroline Murawski,Rui Bian

doi:10.1038/s41467-020-14880-2

Abstract

Organic optoelectronic devices combine high-performance, simple fabrication and distinctive form factors. They are widely integrated in smart devices and wearables as flexible, high pixel density organic light emitting diode (OLED) displays, and may be scaled to large area by roll-to-roll printing for lightweight solar power systems. Exceptionally thin and flexible organic devices may enable future integrated bioelectronics and security features. However, as a result of their low charge mobility, these are generally thought to be slow devices with microsecond response times, thereby limiting their full scope of potential applications. By investigating the factors limiting their bandwidth and overcoming them, we demonstrate here exceptionally fast OLEDs with bandwidths in the hundreds of MHz range. This opens up a wide range of potential applications in spectroscopy, communications, sensing and optical ranging. As an illustration of this, we have demonstrated visible light communication using OLEDs with data rates exceeding 1 gigabit per second.

Highlights

Organic optoelectronic devices combine high-performance, simple fabrication and distinctive form factors
We have demonstrated a breakthrough in high speed organic light emitting diode (OLED) performance
Organic optoelectronic devices are usually thought to be slow, but we have shown how the potential limitations of electrical time constant, low mobility and excited state lifetime can be overcome by careful device design and materials selection

Summary

Introduction

Organic optoelectronic devices combine high-performance, simple fabrication and distinctive form factors They are widely integrated in smart devices and wearables as flexible, high pixel density organic light emitting diode (OLED) displays, and may be scaled to large area by rollto-roll printing for lightweight solar power systems. To the best of our knowledge, this constitutes an improvement of a factor of 20 over previously reported OLED VLC data rates[17], and is achieved over a much larger distance We believe that these results will pave the way for efficient, low-cost, and high-speed organic optoelectronics, with potential applications in secure communications, point of care diagnostics, and optical imaging and ranging

Methods

Results

Conclusion