Save energy on OLED lighting by a simple yet powerful technique

Abstract

Due to the very low light extraction efficiency of conventional organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), the application of OLEDs for next-generation lighting remains limited. Therefore, in order to enhance the light extraction efficiencies that result in improving the luminous efficacy (LE, lm W⁻¹) and external quantum efficiency (η_EQE, %) of OLEDs, three different geometrically profiled, negatively nanostructured periodic semi-pyramid polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) layers are used to create a hole at depths of 500 nm, 650 nm, and 1000 nm; these are designated as the polymeric lighting extraction film (PLEF) I, PLEF II, and PLEF III, respectively. These layers are placed directly on the backside of the green emissive bottom-emitting OLED (BE-OLED) glass substrates as an outcoupling enhancement PLEF that improves the glass substrate/air interface. Through the simple combination with three different nanostructures on each green emissive BE-OLED, a maximum enhancement of up to 50% is achieved in the LE and η_EQE measured at the same brightness, which is 1.5 times higher than the reference green emissive BE-OLED without a PLEF. Therefore, global energy saving can be achieved through reducing the power consumption by up to 30% possibly estimated from LE using the integrated PLEFs.