Substantial performance improvement in inverted polymer light-emitting diodes via surface plasmon resonance induced electrode quenching control.

Inverted-type polymer light-emitting diodes with Au nanoparticles modified ITO cathode has exhibited improved brightness from 5900 to 15,000 cd m(-2) (1.5-fold enhancement) and enhanced luminous efficiency from 4.4 to 10.5 cd A(-1) (1.4-fold enhancement), when greenish emissive polymer-P-PPV was applied as active layer. Both the experimental and theoretical results show that it is mainly attributed to effective overlapping between local surface plasmon resonance induced by Au nanopartices and excitons quenching region at ZnO/P-PPV interface, which makes originally electrode-quenched excitons emissive and increases excitons efficiency.