Organics at High Energy: Achieving High Performance Under the Most Adverse Conditions
Abstract
Organic electronics has given rise to large industries such as in displays and lighting, and promises to deliver new generations of solar cells, medical and sensing devices. Up to the current time, however, organic materials are found to degrade and devices become non-functional when subjected to high energy excitations (e. g. excited states that emit in the blue or the ultraviolet), or at very high energy densities such as that found in ultra-intense lighting sources or lasers. It is apparent that the field is reaching a performance ceiling when certain energy “thresholds” are crossed. This program will investigate the fundamental sources of these thresholds, and find means to exceed current expectations for the lifetime and performance of organic devices subjected to high excitation energies. To accomplish this objective, we will address two of what are arguably the most high value and difficult challenges confronting organic electronic technology today: (i) Extending the lifetime of blue phosphorescent organic light emitting devices (PHOLEDs) to hundreds of thousands of hours via hot excited state management, and (ii) demonstration of an electrically pumped organic laser by physically separating the light emission zone from the charge injection zone, eliminating large losses associated with triplet excitons. Both of these device-based tasks have one thing in common: they seek to provide a fundamental understanding of organics excited to high energies and at high energy densities with the objective of controlling and channeling the destructive, often nonlinear interactions with materials driven in this new regime of operation. Mitigating energy-induced degradation, and reducing optical losses in films containing a high density of triplet and polaron states will have wide-ranging impacts on the applications and performance achieved by organic photonic devices of all types, whether they be light emitters, detectors or switches.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Apr 09, 2018
- Source ID
- FA95501810162
Entities
People
- Stephen R. Forrest
Organizations
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research
- United States Air Force
- University of Michigan