Enhanced Operating Temperature Stability of Organic Solar Cells with Metal Oxide Hole Extraction Layer.

Organic solar cells (OSCs) are promising renewable energy sources for replacing fossil fuels. The power conversion efficiency (PCE) of OSCs has increased based on tremendous effort in material and device engineering. Still, the stability of OSC, such as long lifetime, negative temperature coefficient, must be enhanced for commercialization. In this study, we investigated OSC performance at a high operating temperature near 300-420 K, which are typical temperature regions in photovoltaic applications, with a different hole-extraction layer (HEL). The metal oxide-based HEL, MoO3, exhibited stable operating properties with a PCE drop rate of -0.13%/°C, as compared to polymeric HEL, PEDOT:PSS (-0.20%/°C). This performance reduction of polymeric HEL originated from the degradation of the interface in contact with PEDOT:PSS, as compared to the robust inorganic metal oxide HEL.

Highly efficient single-stack hybrid cool white OLED utilizing blue thermally activated delayed fluorescent and yellow phosphorescent emitters.

Highly efficient single-stack hybrid cool white organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) having blue-yellow-blue multiple emitting layers (EMLs) are designed and constructed by utilizing blue thermally activated delayed fluorescent (TADF) and yellow phosphorescent emitters. The out-coupling efficiencies of yellow and blue emissions are maximized by tuning the ITO and total device thickness that satisfies both of antinode positions for yellow and blue emissions in a limited multiple EML thickness. To obtain a cool white emission, the exciton formation ratio in the blue-yellow-blue multiple EML system is controlled by manipulating the recombination zone through charge conductivity variation of host medium in the blue TADF EML. The resulting device exhibits cool white emission with very high maximum external quantum efficiency of 23.1% and CIE color coordinates of (0.324, 0.337). We anticipate that the studied approach will raise the viability of single-stack hybrid cool white OLEDs for high performance display applications.

Spirobifluorene Core-Based Novel Hole Transporting Materials for Red Phosphorescence OLEDs.

Two new hole transporting materials, named HTM 1A and HTM 1B, were designed and synthesized in significant yields using the well-known Buchwald Hartwig and Suzuki cross- coupling reactions. Both materials showed higher decomposition temperatures (over 450 °C) at 5% weight reduction and HTM 1B exhibited a higher glass transition temperature of 180 °C. Red phosphorescence-based OLED devices were fabricated to analyze the device performances compared to Spiro-NPB and NPB as reference hole transporting materials. Devices consist of hole transporting material as HTM 1B showed better maximum current and power efficiencies of 16.16 cd/A and 11.17 lm/W, at the same time it revealed an improved external quantum efficiency of 13.64%. This efficiency is considerably higher than that of Spiro-NPB and NPB-based reference devices.

Luminance uniformity study of OLED lighting panels depending on OLED device structures.

This paper describes the luminance uniformity of OLED lighting panels depending on OLED device structures of single emission layer (single-EML), 2-tandem, and 3-tandem. The luminance distribution is evaluated through the circuit simulation and the fabricated panel measurement. In the simulation results with yellow-green color panels of 30 × 80 mm2 emission area, a 3-tandem structure shows the lowest non-uniformity (1.34% at 7.5V), compared to single-EML (5.67% at 2.8V) and 2-tandem (2.78% at 5.3 V) structures at 1,000 cd/m2. The luminance non-uniformity is germane to the OLED conductance showing that the high luminance-current efficiency is of the most importance to achieve the uniform voltage and luminance distribution. In measurement, a 3-tandem structure also achieves the most uniform luminance distribution with non-uniformity of 4.1% while single EML and 2-tandem structures accomplish 9.6%, and 6.4%, respectively, at ~1,000 cd/m2. In addition, the simulation results ensure that a 3-tandem structure panel is allowed to be enlarged the panel size up to about 5,000 mm2 for lower luminance non-uniformity than 10% without any auxiliary metal electrodes.

High efficiency red top-emitting micro-cavity organic light emitting diodes.

In this study, we present optical simulation versus real fabricated device results in the micro-cavity red top-emitting organic light emitting diodes (TEOLEDs). The optical simulation results indicate that the two kinds of possible emissive layer (EML) positions exist in the second order micro-cavity effect and each EMLs could emit the similar radiance with near National Television System Committee (NTSC) color coordinate. Expected current efficiency and external quantum efficiency by the optical simulation toward the surface normal in the red tandem TEOLED are 98.8 cd/A and 22.6% for two EMLs, while fabricated device shows 95.8 cd/A and 26.5%, respectively.