Analysis of the turn-off dynamics in polymer light-emitting diodes

Abstract

We present experimental techniques to analyze the electroluminescence (EL) of polymer light-emitting diodes following the removal of an applied voltage pulse. We explain the fast modulation of the EL intensity at turn-off in terms of the sudden reduction of the Langevin recombination rate, and extract the time evolution the device’s internal electric field at the recombination zone during the application of a voltage pulse. The results are compared to, and found to be consistent with, those of simple numerical modeling. The subsequent long-lived EL tail is analyzed to give the time evolution of the carrier distributions at the recombination zone once the voltage pulse has been removed.