Measuring external photoluminescence quantum efficiency of organic solid films

► A reliable algorithm to determine the PLQE of organic luminescent materials. ► Not only is the experiment simplified, but also the PLQE value is less error-prone. ► In principle, the method could be extended to almost all fluorescent films. An algorithm with high reliability to obtain the photoluminescence quantum efficiency (PLQE) of the organic solid materials was developed by directly calculating the number of the absorbed photons and the emitted photons. By eliminating the step to determine the sample’s absorbance, not only is the experiment simplified, but also the PLQE value is less error-prone. Moreover, our developed method could be extended to more fluorescent materials, for which current methods either fail or require performing complex calculations. Three conjugated polymers and a dendrimer were tested to demonstrate the method’s advantages of easier set-up, fewer steps for processing, and higher accuracy.