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Nano Research 2023, 16(5): 7537-7544 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-022-5286-2
Research Article | Issue | Published: 16 January 2023

Crown ether-assisted room-temperature halide passivation for high-efficiency PbS quantum dots enabling large-area and long-lifetime near-infrared QD-OLEDs

Show Author's Information Zhen Jia1,  Haoyun Shao1,  Jingyi Xu1,  Yu Dai1,  Juan Qiao1,2( )
Key Lab of Organic Optoelectronics and Molecular Engineering of Ministry of Education, Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
Laboratory for Flexible Electronics Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
Keywords:
light-emitting diode, near-infrared emission, PbS quantum dot, chloride surface passivation, crown ether
Topics:
Light emitting diodes Nanocrystals
Cite this article:
Jia Z, Shao H, Xu J, et al. Crown ether-assisted room-temperature halide passivation for high-efficiency PbS quantum dots enabling large-area and long-lifetime near-infrared QD-OLEDs. Nano Research, 2023, 16(5): 7537-7544. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-022-5286-2
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Abstract Full text Electronic supplementary material About this article

High-efficiency and low-cost near-infrared (NIR) emitting quantum dots (QDs) are highly desirable for next-generation intrinsically flexible NIR light sources. Halide passivation is commonly employed to passivate surface traps to obtain high-quality NIR-emitting PbS QDs, but this procedure requires high temperature and inert atmospheres. Here we develop a facile room-temperature halide passivation method for highly efficient NIR-emitting PbS QDs by employing crown ethers as a unique auxiliary additive. Experimental and theoretical investigations reveal that the formation of K+-crown ethers complex effectively facilitates the dissociation of KCl in toluene and releases more Cl− ions for extraordinary halide passivation at room temperature and in the air, thus improving the photoluminescence quantum yield from 24% to 35% in solution and further to 44% in blend films. The well-passivated PbS QD films are integrated with red organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) and the resulting QD-OLEDs exhibit high-performance NIR emission centered at 887 nm, a high external quantum efficiency of 5.2% at a radiance of 10 W·sr−1·m−2, and superior operational stability with long lifetime T90 of 188 h at the current density of 25 mA·cm−2. We also construct a large-area NIR QD-OLED (5 cm × 5 cm) with desirable uniform emission. This work opens a new avenue to achieve robust large-area NIR planar light sources for broad applications.


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About this article

Crown ether-assisted room-temperature halide passivation for high-efficiency PbS quantum dots enabling large-area and long-lifetime near-infrared QD-OLEDs

Show Author's information Zhen Jia1, Haoyun Shao1, Jingyi Xu1, Yu Dai1, Juan Qiao1,2( )
Key Lab of Organic Optoelectronics and Molecular Engineering of Ministry of Education, Department of Chemistry, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
Laboratory for Flexible Electronics Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China

Abstract

High-efficiency and low-cost near-infrared (NIR) emitting quantum dots (QDs) are highly desirable for next-generation intrinsically flexible NIR light sources. Halide passivation is commonly employed to passivate surface traps to obtain high-quality NIR-emitting PbS QDs, but this procedure requires high temperature and inert atmospheres. Here we develop a facile room-temperature halide passivation method for highly efficient NIR-emitting PbS QDs by employing crown ethers as a unique auxiliary additive. Experimental and theoretical investigations reveal that the formation of K+-crown ethers complex effectively facilitates the dissociation of KCl in toluene and releases more Cl− ions for extraordinary halide passivation at room temperature and in the air, thus improving the photoluminescence quantum yield from 24% to 35% in solution and further to 44% in blend films. The well-passivated PbS QD films are integrated with red organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) and the resulting QD-OLEDs exhibit high-performance NIR emission centered at 887 nm, a high external quantum efficiency of 5.2% at a radiance of 10 W·sr−1·m−2, and superior operational stability with long lifetime T90 of 188 h at the current density of 25 mA·cm−2. We also construct a large-area NIR QD-OLED (5 cm × 5 cm) with desirable uniform emission. This work opens a new avenue to achieve robust large-area NIR planar light sources for broad applications.

Keywords: light-emitting diode, near-infrared emission, PbS quantum dot, chloride surface passivation, crown ether

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Publication history
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Acknowledgements

Publication history

Received: 11 September 2022
Revised: 18 October 2022
Accepted: 31 October 2022
Published: 16 January 2023
Issue date: May 2023

Copyright

© Tsinghua University Press 2022

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2020YFA0715000) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51773109). We are very grateful to Prof. Hao Zhang for his valuable suggestion on our manuscript.

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