Origin of Enhanced Hole Injection in Organic Light-Emitting Diodes with an Electron-Acceptor Doping Layer: p-Type Doping or Interfacial Diffusion?

The electrical doping nature of a strong electron acceptor, 1,4,5,8,9,11-hexaazatriphenylene hexacarbonitrile (HATCN), is investigated by doping it in a typical hole-transport material, N,N'-bis(naphthalen-1-yl)-N,N'-diphenylbenzidine (NPB). A better device performance of organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) was achieved by doping NPB with HATCN. The improved performance could, in principle, arise from a p-type doping effect in the codeposited thin films. However, physical characteristics evaluations including UV-vis absorption, Fourier transform infrared absorption, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy demonstrated that there was no obvious evidence of charge transfer in the NPB:HATCN composite. The performance improvement in NPB:HATCN-based OLEDs is mainly attributed to an interfacial modification effect owing to the diffusion of HATCN small molecules. The interfacial diffusion effect of the HATCN molecules was verified by the in situ ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy evaluations.