An All-Organic Flexible Visible Light Communication System.

César Vega-Colado,José Sánchez-Pena,Eduardo López-Fraguas,Juan Torres,Xabier Quintana,Morten A Geday,Ricardo Vergaz,Beatriz Romero,Gonzalo Del Pozo,Cristina De Dios,Palvi Apilo,Diego Martín-Martín,Belén Arredondo

doi:10.3390/s18093045

Abstract

Visible light communication systems can be used in a wide variety of applications, from driving to home automation. The use of wearables can increase the potential applications in indoor systems to send and receive specific and customized information. We have designed and developed a fully organic and flexible Visible Light Communication system using a flexible OLED, a flexible P3HT:PCBM-based organic photodiode (OPD) and flexible PCBs for the emitter and receiver conditioning circuits. We have fabricated and characterized the I-V curve, modulation response and impedance of the flexible OPD. As emitter we have used a commercial flexible organic luminaire with dimensions 99 × 99 × 0.88 mm, and we have characterized its modulation response. All the devices show frequency responses that allow operation over 40 kHz, thus enabling the transmission of high quality audio. Finally, we integrated the emitter and receiver components and its electronic drivers, to build an all-organic flexible VLC system capable of transmitting an audio file in real-time, as a proof of concept of the indoor capabilities of such a system.

Highlights

Visible light communication (VLC) which provides simultaneous illumination and wireless data transmission has received great attention in the past decade
We show a proof of concept of an all-organic flexible VLC prototype system used in a real application
We show the characterization of the main parts of the VLC system, i.e., the organic photodiode (OPD), the organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) and the performance performance of the whole system

Summary

Introduction

Visible light communication (VLC) which provides simultaneous illumination and wireless data transmission has received great attention in the past decade. There has been a growing interest in the integration of organic optoelectronic components in VLC systems since they offer advantages over traditional silicon based devices, such as low cost and low environmental impact production, lightweight, large-area processing and mechanical flexibility [13,14,15,16,17]. In this context, organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) and organic photodetector (OPDs) must meet a list of requirements in order to be integrated in commercial products. OPDs have attracted great attention and, to date, these devices report competitive figures of merit; high responsivity up to ~0.4 A/W [18], high external quantum efficiency of 65–70% [19,20], high detectivity of 3.21 × 1013 Jones and low dark current density of 0.31 nA cm−2 [19]

Methods

Results

Conclusion