Highly Efficient Red Quantum Dot Light-Emitting Diodes by Balancing Charge Injection and Transport

Quantum dot light-emitting diodes (QLEDs) have promising commercial value and application prospects in the fields of displays and lighting. However, a charge-transfer imbalance always exists in the devices. In this work, the high-efficiency red QLEDs were obtained via employing the mixtures of poly[(9,9-dioctylfluorenyl-2,7-diyl)-alt-(4,4′-(N-(4-butylphenyl) (TFB) and 4,4′-bis(carbazole-9-yl)-1,1′-biphenyl (CBP) as hole-transport layers (HTLs) by solution processing. The optimized mixing concentration of CBP is 20 wt %. The corresponding red QLED exhibited a maximum luminance of 963 433 cd m–2, a maximum current efficiency of 38.7 cd A–1, an external quantum efficiency of 30.0%, a central wavelength of 628 nm with a narrow full width at half-maximum (fwhm) of 24 nm, and a 5-fold T50 lifetime enhancement at an extremely high luminance of 200 000 cd m–2. The characteristics of carrier-only devices with QD emissive layers (QD EMLs) and impedance characteristics of QLEDs demonstrate that these advances are chiefly ascribed to the more balanced charge transport and efficient hole–electron recombination in EML. We anticipate that our results could offer a low-cost and simple solution-processed method for preparing high-performance QLEDs.