Effects of Energy‐Level Alignment on Operating Voltages of Blue Organic Light‐Emitting Diodes

Abstract Although organic light‐emitting diodes (OLEDs) have been studied extensively for various applications, the effect of the electron behavior on the characteristics of OLEDs has rarely been discussed owing to the difficulty in investigating the actual energy levels. Understanding the correlation between energy levels and the characteristics of OLEDs is essential to improve the performances of blue OLEDs, since the materials with relatively large band gaps used in blue OLEDs make it difficult to deliver electrons from the cathode to the emitting layer (EML). Here, it is shown that the operating voltages of blue OLEDs strongly depend on the energy barrier between the cathode and the EML, which is clarified by investigating the energy‐level alignment in blue OLEDs. It is found that a blue OLED fabricated using a superbase as the electron injection layer exhibits a lower operating voltage than conventional blue OLEDs fabricated using Li compounds. Moreover, there is a clear energy barrier between the cathode and the EML in conventional blue OLEDs, whereas there is no energy barrier in blue OLEDs fabricated using a superbase. Minimization of the energy barrier between the cathode and the EML is demonstrated to be essential to obtain blue emission at low operating voltages.