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Intrinsically white organic polarized emissive semiconductors

Nature Photonics volume 19, pages 378–386 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Polarized emissive media are crucial for various applications in display, lighting and optical communication. An attractive research direction is to develop intrinsically white organic polarized emissive semiconductors as ideal candidates for miniaturized polarized light-emitting devices; however, it has been a considerable challenge to achieve polarized white-light emission due to the lack of suitable materials and effective preparation methods. Here we overcome this bottleneck by realizing white organic polarized emissive semiconductor single crystals (WOPESSCs). We employ a bimolecular doping method based on using highly polarized, blue-emitting 2,6-diphenylanthracene as the host single crystal, and controlling energy and polarization transfer with green- and red-emitting guests. The fabricated WOPESSCs achieve a photoluminescence quantum yield of 38.3% and a mobility of 4.9 cm2 V–1 s–1. The emitted light exhibits a degree of polarization as high as 0.96 with Commission Internationale de l’Eclairage coordinates of (0.3258, 0.3396). We also demonstrate the tunable emission properties of WOPESSCs from blue–white to yellow–white light by adjusting polarization angles, and three-primary-colour optical imaging with a wide colour gamut that covers 112% of the National Television System Committee standard. Furthermore, we fabricate highly polarized microscale WOPESSCs light-emitting diodes and light-emitting transistors, achieving high-quality white-light emission and wide-range colour tunability enabled by gate voltage-driven energy transfer processes. We believe these findings pave the way for manufacturing white and multicolour polarized emissive semiconductors and microscale light-emitting devices, promising diverse applications across various fields.

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Fig. 1: Molecular doping design concepts for realizing WOPESSCs.
Fig. 2: Fluorescent properties of double-doped single crystals and WOPESSCs.
Fig. 3: Polarized fluorescence properties and schematic molecular packing of WOPESSCs.
Fig. 4: Optical imaging of WOPESSCs.
Fig. 5: Polarized electroluminescence properties of WOPESSCs–OPLEDs.
Fig. 6: The optoelectronic properties of WOPESSCs–OPLETs.

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Data availability

All data needed to evaluate the conclusions of this study are present in the paper and the Supplementary Information. Additional data are available from the corresponding authors on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 52233010 to H.D. and C.G., 52103245 to C.G., 52403342 to Z.Q., 52121002 to W.H., U21A6002 to W.H., T2441002 to W.H. and H.D., and 22021002 to H.D.), the CAS Project for Young Scientists in Basic Research (grant no. YSBR-053 to H.D.), the Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences (grant no. BNLMS-CXXM-202012 to H.D., C.G., T.W., H.G. and Z.Q.), the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (grant no. 2023M743552 to Z.Q.), the China National Postdoctoral Program for Innovative Talents (grant no. BX20230372 to Z.Q.), and Haihe Laboratory of Sustainable Chemical Transformations.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Zhengsheng Qin, Yu Zhang.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, Key Laboratory of Organic Solids, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Zhengsheng Qin, Yu Zhang, Tianyu Wang, Haikuo Gao, Can Gao & Huanli Dong

  2. Key Laboratory of Organic Integrated Circuit, Ministry of Education & Tianjin Key Laboratory of Molecular Optoelectronic Sciences, Department of Chemistry, School of Science, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China

    Zhengsheng Qin, Xiaotao Zhang & Wenping Hu

  3. School of Chemical Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Yu Zhang & Huanli Dong

  4. Haihe Laboratory of Sustainable Chemical Transformations, Tianjin, China

    Wenping Hu

  5. Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemical Science and Engineering, Tianjin, China

    Wenping Hu

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Contributions

H.D. and W.H. conceived the project and designed the experiments. Z.Q. prepared the molecular doped organic semiconductor single crystals, fabricated devices, and measured their optical and electrical properties. Y.Z. prepared and characterized organic field-effect transistor devices. Y.Z. participated in the fabrication of OPLEDs. T.W., H.G. and C.G. assisted with the experiment characterizations and data analysis. Z.Q. performed the theoretical calculations. Z.Q., H.D. and W.H. wrote the paper. X.Z kindly provided help for atomic force microscopy morphology characterization. All authors discussed the results and commented on the paper.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Huanli Dong or Wenping Hu.

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Nature Photonics thanks Qingdong Ou, Qichun Zhang and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–33, Notes 1–4 and Tables 1–3.

Supplementary Video 1

A video of the OPLEDs device in operation.

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Qin, Z., Zhang, Y., Wang, T. et al. Intrinsically white organic polarized emissive semiconductors. Nat. Photon. 19, 378–386 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-024-01609-6

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