Enhancement of electron injection in inverted bottom-emitting organic light-emitting diodes using Al/LiF compound thin film

The inverted bottom-emitting organic light-emitting devices (IBOLEDs) were prepared, with the structure of ITO/Al (x nm)/LiF (1 nm)/Bphen (40 nm)/CBP: GIr1 (14%):R-4b (2%) (10 nm)/BCP (3 nm)/CBP:GIr1 (14%):R-4b (2%) (20 nm)/TCTA (10 nm)/NPB (40 nm)/MoO3 (40 nm)/Al (100 nm), where the thickness of electron injection layer Al (x) are 0 nm, 2 nm, 3 nm, 4 nm and 5 nm, respectively. In this paper, the electron injection condition and luminance properties of inverted devices were investigated by changing the thickness of Al layer in Al/LiF compound thin film. It turns out that the introduction of Al layer can improve electron injection of the devices dramatically. Furthermore, the device exerts lower driving voltage and higher current efficiency when the thickness of electron injection Al layer is 3 nm. For example, the current efficiency of the device with 3-nm-thick Al layer reaches 19.75 cd·A-1 when driving voltage is 7 V, which is 1.24, 1.17 and 17.03 times larger than those of the devices with 2 nm, 4 nm and 5 nm Al layer, respectively. The device property reaches up to the level of corresponding conventional device. In addition, all inverted devices with electron injection Al layer show superior stability of color coordinate due to the adoption of co-evaporation emitting layer and BCP spacer-layer, and the color coordinate of the inverted device with 3-nm-thick Al layer only changes from (0.580 6, 0.405 6) to (0.532 8, 0.436 3) when driving voltage increases from 6 V to 10 V. © 2018, Tianjin University of Technology and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.