All-Solution-Processed Organic Upconversion Device Comprising a Light-Emitting Electrochemical Cell
Karen Strassel a b, Santhanu Panikar Ramanandan a b, René Schneider a, Frank Nüesch a b, Roland Hany a
a EMPA - Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, Überland Strasse, 129, Dübendorf, Switzerland
b Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland
Proceedings of Interfaces in Organic and Hybrid Thin-Film Optoelectronics (INFORM)
València, Spain, 2019 March 5th - 7th
Organizers: Natalie Stingelin, Hendrik Bolink and Michele Sessolo
Oral, Karen Strassel, presentation 050
DOI: https://doi.org/10.29363/nanoge.inform.2019.050
Publication date: 8th January 2019

Organic near-infrared (NIR) to visible upconversion devices (OUCs) are receiving interest due to manifold applications in remote sensing, night vision, NIR-imaging and biomedicine. In an OUC, an organic photodetector (OPD) is series connected with an organic light emitting component. When NIR light is absorbed by the OPD, electron-hole pairs are formed. Under an appropriate bias and for conditions of energetic interface matching, charges are easily driven in the light-emitting component where they recombine leading to visible light emission. The outcome is a NIR-to-visible upconverted image that can be captured using a conventional camera. OUCs benefit from the numerous advantages of organic electronics in general and offer the potential to convert a NIR scene into a visible image using large area devices that can be realized at low cost by high-throughput coating and printing techniques on flexible substrates. However, no all-solution processed OUC has been demonstrated so far. Here we report on the fabrication and optimization of all-solution processed OUCs based on a NIR squaraine dye OPD [1] and an emitting phenyl-substituted poly(para-phenylenevinylene) copolymer termed Super Yellow (SY). The key for multilayer solution processing is to have a layer structure which can withstand solvents used in subsequent processing. To cope with layer dissolution, poor wettability and imperfect film morphology, several approaches such as surface treatment, orthogonal solvents and cross-linkable layers were successfully used. In a first step, we fabricated OUCs with a SY/Ca/Al OLED and found that these devices are surprisingly long-term stable both during storage and in the presence of NIR light. The device converts NIR light at 980 nm efficiently to visible light at 590 nm with a high NIR light on/off ratio (800 at 4.5 V). To circumvent the vacuum thermal evaporation step of Ca, we then added a salt (Li+CF3SO3-) to the SY layer and thereby transformed the OLED into an organic light-emitting electrochemical cell (OLEC). OUCs comprising an OLEC were fabricated with top electrodes composed of Al (evaporated) or Ag (screen printed). Due to the presence of mobile ions in OLECs, such OUCs are temporal dynamic devices. Device operation involves the formation of electric double layers at the SY interfaces that facilitate the injection of electrical charges, the formation of n- and p-doped regions and an intrinsic region in between, where electron-hole recombination and light emission takes place [2]. We characterized the dynamic behavior of such all-solution processed OUCs in detail and found that an appropriate pre-conditioning voltage step results in a low turn-on voltage (~2.7 V) and a NIR-to-visible photon-to-photon conversion efficiency on a par with the SY/Ca/Al OLED. OPD-OLEC upconverters can pave the way to simplified manufacturing of low-cost and large-area NIR imagers entirely via solution-based techniques.

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