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Positive-feedback organic light-emitting diodes and upconverters

Nature Photonics volume 18, pages 1299–1304 (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

Organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) are among the most successful organic electronic devices so far. They currently dominate the mobile display market and are expanding into a broad range of lighting, automotive and wearable device applications. Here we introduce a new class of organic light-emitting device that exhibits bistability owing to positive photonic feedback between an organic photodiode and a tandem OLED integrated in the same layer stack. These unusual devices display giant hysteresis in both their current and light emission, and respond sensitively to low-level external illumination, enabling optoelectronic upconversion with 100-fold photon-to-photon gain. Given their compatibility with existing OLED materials and manufacturing lines, these devices could find near-term use in new types of display and upconversion imaging applications, as well as offer a new platform for neuromorphic optoelectronics and image recognition.

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Fig. 1: Device architecture and operating mechanism.
Fig. 2: Bistable device operation.
Fig. 3: Dynamic response.
Fig. 4: Upconversion and imaging.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding authors on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by DARPA award no. HR0011-22-C-0053 (N.C.G., J.W.H. and U.G.). The views, opinions and/or findings expressed are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the official views or policies of the Department of Defense or the US Government.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

    Raju Lampande, Adrian Pizano, Robert Cawthorn & Noel C. Giebink

  2. Department of Electrical Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA

    Raju Lampande, Adrian Pizano, Robert Cawthorn, Hunter Bowman, Alex Grede & Noel C. Giebink

  3. OLEDWorks LLC, Rochester, NY, USA

    Jon-Paul S. DesOrmeaux, Jonathon R. Schrecengost & John W. Hamer

  4. NRC postdoc residing at the US Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC, USA

    Alex Grede

  5. RTX Technology Research Center, East Hartford, CT, USA

    Urcan Guler

Authors
  1. Raju Lampande
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Contributions

N.C.G., J.W.H. and U.G. conceived the idea and supervised the project. R.L., J-P.S.D., J.W.H. and N.C.G. designed the experiments, J-P.S.D. fabricated the devices and R.L. performed the experiments and analysed the data. A.P., J.R.S., R.C., H.B. and A.J.G. performed supporting experiments and U.G. helped secure funding for the project. R.L. and N.C.G. wrote the manuscript with revisions and approval from all of the authors.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to John W. Hamer or Noel C. Giebink.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

J.W.H., J-P.S.D. and J.R.S. are employees of OLEDWorks, a company that manufactures OLED lighting products. U.G. is an employee of RTX. N.C.G. and J.W.H. have filed a patent on the photonic feedback OLED method and formulation. The other authors declare no competing interests.

Peer review

Peer review information

Nature Photonics thanks Ebinazar Namdas and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Notes 1–12 and references.

Supplementary Video 1

Lateral spreading of positive feedback in a SubPc/C70 bistable device, initiated locally in the lower right corner of the device by a red HeNe laser beam. The video is slowed down by a factor of four relative to real time.

Supplementary Video 2

Lateral spreading of positive feedback in a SubPc/C70 bistable device, initiated locally by a bright spot defect as the bias is slowly ramped up over the course of the video.

Supplementary Video 3

A pixelated SubPc/C70 bistable device as the bias is ramped up in the dark. One pixel with a bright spot defect lights before all of the others, then a second defective pixel at a higher voltage, and then all of the pixels suddenly jump into their high state at the pristine device threshold voltage near the end of the video.

Supplementary Video 4

A moving illumination spot on a pixelated SubPc/C70 device operating in bistable mode, demonstrating pixel latching that follows the illumination spot.

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Lampande, R., DesOrmeaux, JP.S., Pizano, A. et al. Positive-feedback organic light-emitting diodes and upconverters. Nat. Photon. 18, 1299–1304 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-024-01520-0

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