Spectrally tunable white light-emitting diodes based on carbon quantum dot-doped poly(N-vinylcarbazole) composites

Abstract

Electroluminescent white light-emitting diodes (WLEDs) are always of great interest for emerging display applications. Carbon-based quantum dots (CQDs) are the newest emerging nanoscale materials that can be employed for this purpose, owing to their broad and bright light emission properties. In the present work, highly luminescent CQDs with an emission quantum yield of 60% were prepared via a colloidal solvothermal method and subsequent silica gel column chromatography. The photoluminescence (PL) peak was located at 550 nm possessing yellow emission, with a full width at half-maximum of 98 nm and a relatively long lifetime of 10.23 ns through a single-exponential recombination pathway. CQDs were employed in an electroluminescent device architecture of an ITO/PEDOT:PSS/TFB/CQD:PVK/TPBi/LiF/Al structure and blended with poly(N-vinylcarbazole) (PVK) to evaluate their ability to reach white electroluminescent emission. Results confirmed a high external quantum efficiency (EQE) of 0.76% and a maximum luminescence of 774.3 cd·m-2. Tuning the ratio between CQDs and PVK from 1:10.25 to 1:5.75 resulted in a systematic shift in CIE x-y coordinates from 0.23-0.26 to 0.21-0.24, located close to the cool white region. The results of the present study can be considered a step forward in fabricating efficient WLEDs based on low-cost CQDs.