[Luminescence characteristics of PVK doped with Ir(ppy)3]

With the increasing development of organic light emitting devices (OLED), interest in the mechanisms of charge carrier photogeneration, separation, transport and recombination continues to grow. Electromodulation of photoluminescence has been used as an efficient probe to investigate the evolution of primary excitation in all electric field. This method can provide useful information on carrier photogeneration, the formation and dissociation of excitons, energy transfer, and exciton recombination in the presence of electric field. The operation of OLED brings electrons and holes from opposite electrodes and generates singlet and triplet excitons. However, triplet excitons are wasted because a radiative transition from triplets is spin-forbidden. Spin statistics predicts that singlet-to-triplet ratio is 1 : 3 in organic semiconductors. One way to harvest light from triplet excitons is to use phosphorescent materials. These materials incorporate a heavy metal atom to mix singlet and triplet states by the strong spin-orbit coupling. As a result, a spin forbidden transition may occur allowing an enhanced triplet emission. Among phosphorescent materials, Ir(ppy)3 has attracted much attention because of its short triplet lifetime to minimize the triplet-triplet annihilation. High quantum efficiencies have been obtained by doping organic molecules and in polymers with Ir(ppy)3. In the present paper, the photoluminescence and electroluminescence spectra of Ir(ppy)3 doped PVK film are measured at room temperature. The device structure is ITO/PEDOT : PSS/PVK Ir(ppy)3/BCP/Alq3/Al. The results show that the luminescence capabilities of devices are different when the concentration of Ir(ppy)3 is different. When the concentration of Ir(ppy)3 is suitable, the luminescence of PVK is lower but that of Ir(ppy)3 is stronger relatively, indicating that the energy transfer from the host materials to the guest materials is sufficient. It is concluded that the device with 5% of Ir(ppy)3 has the best luminescence properties according to its light power-current-voltage curve, meaning that the best concentration of Ir(ppy)3 in such kind of device is 5%.