RGB-Single-Chip OLEDs for High-Speed Visible-Light Communication by Wavelength-Division Multiplexing

Organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) have been developed for high-speed transmitters of visible-light communication (VLC) but so far the possibility of direct fabrication of multiple colors on a single substrate has not been exploited for multi-Gbps data transmission. Very fast red-, green-, and blue (RGB)-emitting OLEDs are developed on a single substrate to realize high data transmission speed by wavelength division multiplexing (WDM). -6 dB electrical bandwidth of over 100 MHz is achieved for all colors by selecting fluorescent materials with nanosecond emission lifetimes and little overlap between their emission spectra and incorporating them into OLEDs designed for high-speed operation. Optical microcavities in top-emitting OLED structures are used to minimize spectral overlap. A record data transmission rate for an OLED transmitter system of 3.2 Gbps is demonstrated, by transmitting data with the 3 colors simultaneously and separating each data by dichroic mirrors. The results show that WDM with integrated RGB pixels is a useful way to increase the data transmission rate of a VLC system based on OLED transmitters, which has the potential to enable multi-gigabit transmission by displays. The availability of high-speed multiple-color devices as developed here also expands applications of OLEDs for spectroscopy, sensing, and ranging.