Abstract
High-efficiency is strongly desired for organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) to be fully realized as the future display and lighting technology. To replace current illumination tools, such as incandescent bulbs and fluorescent tubes, for examples, OLEDs with much higher efficiency are demanded. We will present herein some approaches for fabricating high-efficiency OLEDs of blue and white emission. Besides employing highly efficient electroluminescent guests and thin device architecture, low injection barriers to carriers, high carrier-transporting character, effective carrier/exciton confinement, balanced carrier-injection, exciton generation on host, effective host-to-guest energy-transfer and improved light-coupling efficiency are essential. Amongst, the incorporation of nano-dots in emissive- and non-emissive-layers can markedly improve the device efficiency. The enhancement is especially marked as small polymeric nano-dots are incorporated into the non-emissive layers. Since the incorporation is not in the emissive layer, the efficiency improvement mechanism works for both fluorescent and phosphorescent devices. Importantly, the efficiency improvement is also a strong function of the surface charge density of the nano-dots. Regardless positively or negatively charged, the improvement becomes more pronounced as the charge density increases. Results regarding some lately achieved extraordinarily highly-efficient OLEDs containing nano-dots with high surface charge will be presented.