Optical analysis of light-emitting electrochemical cells

The light-emitting electrochemical cell (LEC) is a contender for emerging applications of light, primarily because it offers low-cost solution fabrication of easily functionalized device architectures. The attractive properties originate in the in-situ formation of electrochemically doped transport regions that enclose an emissive intrinsic region, but the understanding of how this intricate doping structure affects the optical performance of the LEC is largely lacking. We combine angle- and doping-dependent measurements and simulations, and demonstrate that the emission zone in our high-performance LEC is centered at ~30% of the active-layer thickness (d_al) from the anode. We further find that the emission intensity and efficiency are undulating with d_al, and establish that the first emission maximum at d_al ~ 100 nm is largely limited by the lossy coupling of excitons to the doping regions, whereas the most prominent loss channel at the second maximum at d_al ~ 300 nm is wave-guided modes.