Interfacial exciton-polaron quenching in organic light-emitting diodes

Interfacial exciton-polaron quenching (EPQ) in organic light-emitting diodes (OLED) refers to the remote and direct energy transfer from the excitons in the emission layer (EML) to the charges accumulated at the interface of the adjacent charge transport layers (CTLs). Here, interfacial EPQ is investigated by using a bilayer hole-only device (HOD), where an ultra-thin dopant layer is selectively introduced near the interface. At the heterointerface, positive-charge accumulation is induced due to the energy difference between distinct organic layers, while excitons are optically pumped in the dopants exclusively. The interfacial EPQ is characterized by measuring a shift in the photoluminescent intensity of the dopants. Such interfacial EPQ indeed depends on the interfacial energy offset and the distance between charges and excitons, and universally occurs regardless of the emission mechanism of OLEDs. We propose the device architecture to potentially reduce interfacial EPQ for achieving high-performance OLEDs.