Achieving High Performance in AC-Field Driven Organic Light Sources

Charge balance in organic light emitting structures is essential to simultaneously achieving high brightness and high efficiency. In DC-driven organic light emitting devices (OLEDs), this is relatively straight forward. However, in the newly emerging, capacitive, field-activated AC-driven organic devices, charge balance can be a challenge. In this work we introduce the concept of gating the compensation charge in AC-driven organic devices and demonstrate that this can result in exceptional increases in device performance. To do this we replace the insulator layer in a typical field-activated organic light emitting device with a nanostructured, wide band gap semiconductor layer. This layer acts as a gate between the emitter layer and the voltage contact. Time resolved device characterization shows that, at high-frequencies (over 40 kHz), the semiconductor layer allows for charge accumulation in the forward bias, light generating part of the AC cycle and charge compensation in the negative, quiescent part of the AC cycle. Such gated AC organic devices can achieve a non-output coupled luminance of 25,900 cd/m(2) with power efficiencies that exceed both the insulator-based AC devices and OLEDs using the same emitters. This work clearly demonstrates that by realizing balanced management of charge, AC-driven organic light emitting devices may well be able to rival today’s OLEDs in performance.