Doping bilayer hole-transport polymer strategy stabilizing solution-processed green quantum-dot light-emitting diodes.

ABSTRACT

Quantum-dot light-emitting diodes (QLEDs) are solution-processed electroluminescence devices with great potential as energy-saving, large-area, and low-cost display and lighting technologies. Ideally, the organic hole-transport layers (HTLs) in QLEDs should simultaneously deliver efficient hole injection and transport, effective electron blocking, and robust electrochemical stability. However, it is still challenging for a single HTL to fulfill all these stringent criteria. Here, we demonstrate a general design of doping-bilayer polymer-HTL architecture for stabilizing high-efficiency QLEDs. We show that the bilayer HTLs combining the electrochemical-stable polymer and the electron-blocking polymer unexpectedly increase the hole injection barrier. We mitigated the problem by p-doping of the underlying sublayer of the bilayer HTLs. Consequently, green QLEDs with an unprecedented maximum luminance of 1,340,000 cd m-2 and a record-long operational lifetime (T95 lifetime at an initial luminance of 1000 cd m-2 is 17,700 hours) were achieved. The universality of the strategy is examined in various polymer-HTL systems, providing a general route toward high-performance solution-processed QLEDs.