Water-Soluble Quantum Dots for Inkjet Printing Color Conversion Films with Simultaneous High Efficiency and Stability

Water-soluble quantum dots (QDs) are necessary to prepare patterned pixels or films for high-resolution displays with less environmental burden but are very limited by the trade-off between photoluminescence and stability of QDs. In this work, we proposed synthesizing water-soluble QDs with simultaneous excellent luminescence properties and high stability by coating the amphiphilic poly(maleic anhydride-alt-1-octadecene)-ethanol amine (PMAO-EA) polymer on the surface of silane-treated QDs. These coated QDs show a photoluminescence quantum yield (PLQY) as high as 94%, and they have good photoluminescence stability against light irradiation and thermal attacks, owing to the suppression of the nonradiative recombination by the polymer layer and the isolation of oxygen and water by the silica layer. The water-soluble QDs, mixed with ethylene glycol, enable inkjet printing of QD color conversion films (QD-CCFs) with an average diameter of 68 μm for each pixel and a high PLQY of 91%. The QD-CCFs are demonstrated to fabricate red-emitting mini-LEDs by combining with blue mini-LED chips, which have an external quantum efficiency as high as 25.86% and a luminance of 2.44 × 10⁷ cd/m². We believe that the proposed strategy is applicable to other water-soluble QDs and paves an avenue for inkjet printing environmentally friendly QD-CCFs for mini/micro-LED displays.