Reliability of organic light-emitting diodes in low-temperature environment* *Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 61775130 and 11974236), the Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality Program, China (Grant Nos. 19DZ2281000 and 17DZ2281000), and the Research Innovation Program for College Graduates of Jiangsu Province, China (Grant Nos. KYCX20 2545 and KYCX20 2549).

Abstract

Organic light-emitting diode (OLED) is an electroluminescent technology that relies on charge-carrier dynamics and is a potential light source for variable environmental conditions. Here, by exploiting a self-developed low-temperature testing system, we investigated the characteristics of hole/electron transport, electro-optic conversion efficiency, and operation lifetime of OLEDs at low-temperature ranging from –40 °C to 0 °C and room temperature (25 °C). Compared to devices operating at room temperature, the carrier transport capability is significantly decreased with reducing temperature, and especially the mobility of the hole-transporting material (HTM) and electron-transporting material (ETM) at –40 °C decreases from 1.16 × 10−6 cm2/V⋅s and 2.60 × 10−4 cm2/V⋅s to 6.91 × 10−9 cm2/V⋅s and 1.44 × 10−5 cm2/V⋅s, respectively. Indeed, the temperature affects differently on the mobilities of HTM and ETM, which favors unbalanced charge-carrier transport and recombination in OLEDs, thereby leading to the maximum current efficiency decreased from 6.46 cd⋅A−1 at 25 °C to 2.74 cd⋅A−1 at –40 °C. In addition, blue fluorescent OLED at –20 °C has an above 56% lifetime improvement (time to 80% of the initial luminance) over the reference device at room temperature, which is attributed to efficiently dissipating heat generated inside the device by the low-temperature environment.