Spontaneous and stimulated light emission from devices with anisotropic materials

Anisotropy in a material can have an important influence on the light emission properties. The main effect is that the atoms, molecules or nanoparticles that emit light may have a preferential orientation. When the light emission is due to an electrical dipole transition along a certain axis, most light will be emitted in the plane perpendicular to that axis. The optical anisotropy of the material further determines how the refractive index of the light depends on the polarization and propagation direction of the light. The emission from oriented emitters in structures consisting of anisotropic layers can be determined with a simulation tool [1]. This tool has been used to predict the emission pattern for OLEDs with oriented dipole emitters and for CLCs with fluorescent dyes.