Thermally stable inverted organic light-emitting diodes using Ag-doped 4,7-diphenyl-1,10-phenanthroline as an electron injection layer

Abstract The thermal stability of organic functional materials affects the performance and lifetime of organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). We have developed a thermally stable inverted OLEDs (IOLEDs) by employing silver (Ag) doped into 4,7-diphenyl-1,10-phenanthroline (Bphen) as an n-type doped electron injection layer (EIL). We found that the formation of Ag complexes by coordination reaction could enhance the thermal stability and produce an asymmetric diffraction pattern based on an analysis of grazing incidence small angle X-ray scattering. Interestingly, with the annealing temperature increasing to 100 °C, the electrical properties of electron-only cells show differentiated phenomenon that the current density based on Ag dopant remains basically unchanged, which is opposite to Cs2CO3 dopant. In addition, at the high temperature of 100 °C, the IOLEDs with Cs2CO3 doped Bphen as an EIL was damaged completely, while the Ag dopant-based devices still maintained good photoelectrical characteristics. Finally, we have demonstrated that the optimized IOLEDs achieved a 40.3% enhancement in current efficiency compared to the conventional device. This work provides a new strategy to increase the thermal stability and performance for the application of IOLEDs operated under high temperature.