Charge transport and light emission in bilayer organic field-effect transistors

Abstract

Recently there has been some major interest in the charge transport and light emission properties of organic field-effect transistors (OFETs). Different device structures have been proposed and they can be divided into two broad categories consisting of either a single layer or a bilayer. In the case of the single-layer OFETs, efficient light emission has not been observed while the performance of the bilayer OFETs appear to be more promising (for instance: recent work on a bilayer OFET has shown distinct ambipolar characteristics as well as limited light emission). In this work, we examined the electroluminescence intensities of bilayer OFETs reported in the open literature and attempted to identify the transport and recombination mechanisms. As observed, light emission in these devices appeared to be linked to a narrow region at the interface acting as a light-emitting source. To understand the recombination mechanisms, we computed the spatial charge distributions under various biasing conditions and correlated the results to the reported electroluminescence intensity data. Our overall results re-affirmed the significance of the light-emitting interface layer and the fact that device operation critically depended on the alignment of the energy levels at the respective interface.