Making silver a stronger n-dopant than cesium via in situ coordination reaction for organic electronics

N-doping is an effective way to increase the electron conductivity of organic semiconductors and achieve ohmic cathode contacts in organic electronics. To avoid the use of difficult-to-handle highly reactive n-dopants, air-stable precursors are widely used nowadays, which could decompose to release reactive species in a subtractive way though always with unwanted and even harmful byproducts during processing. Here, we show that air-stable metals, such as copper, silver and gold, could release free electrons readily in the presence of chelating ligands, as the irreversible coordination reaction between metal ions and the ligands would push the equilibrium between metals and metal ions to the forward direction. By using a well-designed multi-functional electron transport material with a strong nucleophilic quality, 4,7-dimethoxy-1,10-phenanthroline (p-MeO-Phen), silver could function as an n-dopant stronger than cesium and could be used to fabricate organic light-emitting diodes with higher performance than the cesium-doped control device.