High performance from extraordinarily thick organic light-emitting diodes

Organic light-emitting diode (OLED) technology is promising for applications in next-generation displays and lighting. However, it is difficult-especially in large-area mass production-to cover a large substrate uniformly with organic layers, and variations in thickness cause the formation of shunting paths between electrodes^1,2, thereby lowering device production yield. To overcome this issue, thicker organic transport layers are desirable because they can cover particles and residue on substrates, but increasing their thickness increases the driving voltage because of the intrinsically low charge-carrier mobilities of organics. Chemical doping of organic layers increases their electrical conductivity and enables fabrication of thicker OLEDs^3,4, but additional absorption bands originating from charge transfer appear⁵, reducing electroluminescence efficiency because of light absorption. Thick OLEDs made with organic single crystals have been demonstrated⁶, but are not practical for mass production. Therefore, an alternative method of fabricating thicker OLEDs is needed. Here we show that extraordinarily thick OLEDs can be fabricated by using the organic-inorganic perovskite methylammonium lead chloride, CH₃NH₃PbCl₃ (MAPbCl₃), instead of organics as the transport layers. Because MAPbCl₃ films have high carrier mobilities and are transparent to visible light, we were able to increase the total thickness of MAPbCl₃ transport layers to 2,000 nanometres-more than ten times the thickness of standard OLEDs-without requiring high voltage or reducing either internal electroluminescence quantum efficiency or operational durability. These findings will contribute towards a higher production yield of high-quality OLEDs, which may be used for other organic devices, such as lasers, solar cells, memory devices and sensors.