Enhanced hole injection in phosphorescent organic light-emitting diodes by thermally evaporating a thin indium trichloride layer.

An ultrathin layer of indium trichloride (InCl(3)) is thermally evaporated on the indium tin oxide (ITO) anode to enhance the hole injection in simplified phosphorescent organic light-emitting diodes (PHOLEDs). Comparing with the device with ultraviolet (UV)-ozone treatment, the device modified by InCl(3) exhibits a maximum current efficiency of 82.2 cd/A measured at about 2000 cd/cm(2) and 36% improvement in power efficiency measured at 20 mA/cm(2). More importantly, more than three times improvement in half lifetime estimated at an initial luminance of 1000 cd/cm(2) is achieved. The investigations using ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and the bias- and temperature-dependent current density-voltage characteristics in the related hole-dominated devices have revealed that the improved device performance is mainly attributed to the enhanced hole injection resulting from the lowered hole injection barrier height in the InCl(3)-modified devices.