Photoconductive Cathode Interlayer for Enhanced Electron Injection in Inverted Polymer Light-Emitting Diodes

The cathode interlayer is of crucial importance for efficient electron injection in inverted polymer light-emitting diodes (PLEDs) to realize high electroluminescence efficiency. Here, a novel photoconductive cathode interlayer based on organic dye-doped ZnO (ZnO:PBI-H) is applied as the cathode buffer layer in PLEDs, and dramatically enhanced device performance is obtained. The photodoping of ZnO may greatly promote the electron injection ability under the device working conditions, which increases the electron-hole recombination efficiency when using P-PPV as the light-emitting material. Thanks to the decreased energy barrier between the cathode interlayer and the light-emitting layer, the turn-on voltage of the PLEDs is obviously reduced when using the photoconductive cathode interlayer. Our results indicate that photodoping of the cathode interlayer is a promising strategy to increase the interlayer performance in light-emitting diodes.