Highly-bright white organic light-emitting diodes based on a single emission layer

Abstract

A very bright white organic light-emitting diode(OLED) was fabricated with a thin layer of 4-{4-[N-(1-naphthyl)-N-phenylaminophenyl]}-1,7-diphenyl-3,5-dimethyl-1,7-dihydro-dipyrazolo [3,4-b;4 ′ 3 ′ -e] pyridine (PAP-NPA) doped with rubrene as the source of the white emission. Thus, with a simple three-layer structure of ITO/NPB(40 nm)/PAP-NPA:0.5% rubrene(20 nm)/TPBI(40 nm)/Mg:Ag, a white light with Commission Internationale de l’Eclairage (CIE) coordinates of (0.31, 0.33) were generated. The device gave a maximum brightness of ∼42 000 cd/m2 at 14 V, and maximum luminance efficiencies of 2.92 lm/W at 6.5 V and 6.11 cd/A at 7.0 V. The CIE coordinates stayed virtually constant when the voltage increased from 8 to 12 V. Furthermore, with a two-layer structure of ITO/PAP-NPA:0.4%rubrene(40 nm)/TPBI(40 nm)/Mg:Ag, the device also reached a stable white color with maximum brightness of ∼37 000 cd/m2 and maximum luminance efficiencies of 2.51 lm/W at 6.5 V and 5.57 cd/A at 8.5 V. The stability of the white color is attributed to the confinement of charge recombination zone in a single layer.