Improving the performance of light-emitting electrochemical cells by optical design

The organic light-emitting electrochemical cell (LEC) has emerged as an enabling technology for a wide range of novel and low-cost emissive applications, but its efficiency is still relatively modest. The focus in the field has so far almost exclusively been directed toward limiting internal loss mechanisms, whereas external losses resulting from poor light-outcoupling have been overlooked. Here, we report a straightforward procedure for improving the efficiency and emission quality of LECs. We find that our high-performance glass-encapsulated LECs exhibit a near-ideal Lambertian emission profile but that total internal reflection at the glass/air interface and a concomitant edge emission and self-absorption represent a significant loss factor. We demonstrate a 60% improvement in the outcoupled luminance in the forward direction by laminating a light-outcoupling film, featuring a hexagonal array of hemispherical microlenses as the surface structure, onto the front side of the device and a large-area metallic reflector onto the back side. With this scalable approach, yellow-emitting LEC devices with a power conversion efficiency of more than 15 lm W(-1) at a luminance of 100 cd m(-2) were realized. Importantly, we find that the same procedure also can mitigate problems with spatial variation in the light-emission intensity, which is a common and undesired feature of large-area LECs.