Air-stable, cross-linkable, hole-injecting/transporting interlayers for improved charge injection in organic light-emitting diodes

Modification of inorganic electrode surfaces has attracted great attention in the quest to optimize organic optoelectronic devices. An air-stable, cross-linkable trimethoxysilane functionalized hole-transporting triarylamine (4,4′-bis[(p-trimethoxysilylpropylphenyl)phenylamino]biphenyl, TPD-[Si(OMe)₃]₂) has been synthesized and self-assembled or spin-coated onto tin-doped indium oxide (ITO) anode surfaces to form monolayers or multilayer siloxane films, respectively. The modified ITO surfaces were characterized by advancing aqueous contact angle, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), atomic force microscopy (AFM), and cyclic voltammetry (CV). Increased surface work function and enhanced ITO-hole transport layer (HTL) contact via robust covalent bonding are expected to facilitate hole injection from the ITO anode, resulting in organic light-emitting diode (OLED) performance enhancement versus that of a device without such interlayers. For a device having the structure ITO/spin-coated-TPD-[Si(OMe)₃]₂ from aqueous alcohol + acetic acid blend solution (40 nm)/NPB (20 nm)/Alq (60 nm)/LiF (1 nm)/Al (100 nm), a maximum light output of 32 800 cd/m², a 4.25 V turn-on voltage, and a maximum current efficiency of 5.8 cd/A is achieved. This performance is comparable to or superior to that of analogous devices prepared with analogous trichorosilyl precursors. The air-stable interlayer material developed here is also applicable to large-area coating techniques.