Lowering the driving voltage and improving the luminance of blue fluorescent organic light-emitting devices by thermal annealing a hole injection layer of pentacene*

We chose pentacene as a hole injection layer (HIL) to fabricate the high performance blue fluorescent organic lightemitting devices (OLEDs). We found that the carrier mobility of the pentacene thin films could be efficiently improved after a critical annealing at temperature 120 °C. Then we performed the tests of scanning electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy, and Kelvin probe to explore the effect of annealing on the pentacene films. The pentacene film exhibited a more crystalline form with better continuities and smoothness after annealing. The optimal device with 120 °C annealed pentacene film and n-doped electron transport layer (ETL) presents a low turn-on voltage of 2.6 V and a highest luminance of 134800 cd/m2 at 12 V, which are reduced by 26% and improved by 50% compared with those of the control device.