Origin of the Efficiency Roll-off in Quantum Dot Light-Emitting Diodes: An Electrically Excited Transient Absorption Spectroscopy Study

In situ characterizations of charge injection dynamics, equilibrated concentration, and electric field distributions shed light on the critical mechanisms of quantum dot light-emitting diodes (QD-LEDs). In this work, we developed electrically excited transient absorption spectroscopy, which can provide the above key information, to investigate the efficiency roll-off of QD-LEDs. We found that the average electron populations per QD are low when QD-LEDs exhibit efficiency roll-off, excluding Auger recombination as the main cause. We also revealed that the weak electrical field inside the QD layer under forward biases has a negligible impact on the efficiency. Interestingly, we found that as the voltage increases the electron concentration in the QD layer saturates at very low levels. When combined with the concomitant efficiency roll-off, we propose electron leakage is the main loss at elevated driving voltages. We further demonstrate that increasing the electron confinement potential with the ZnS shell enables us to efficiently mitigate the efficiency roll-off.