Properties of non-doped organic light-emitting devices based on an ultrathin iridium complex phosphor layer

Abstract

Organic light-emitting devices (OLEDs) were constructed with a structure of indium tin oxide (ITO)/N,N’-bis(naphthalen-1-yl)-N,N’-bis(phenyl)-benzidine (NPB) (50 − x nm)/bis[2-(4-tertbutylphenyl)benzothiazolato-N,C2’] iridium (acetylacetonate) [(t-bt)2Ir(acac)] (dnm)/NPB (x nm)/2,2’,2"(1,3,5-benzenetriyl)tris-(1-phenyl-1H-benzimidazole) (TPBI) (30 nm)/Mg:Ag (200 nm). A thin blue emission material of NPB was used as a separating layer, and the (t-bt)2Ir(acac) yellow phosphorescent dye was acted as an ultrathin light-emitting layer. TPBI acted as both hole-blocking and electron-transporting layer. By changing the location (x) and the thickness (d) of the phosphor dye, the variation of device performance were investigated. The results showed that all the devices had a turn-on voltage of 2.8 V. In the case of d = 0.2 nm and x = 5 nm, the OLED had a maximum luminance of 18367 cd/m2 and a maximum power efficiency of 5.3 lm/W. The high performance is attributed to both direct charge carrier trapping of iridium phosphor dye and the thin NPB separation layer, which effectively confines the recombination zone of charge carriers.