Electroluminescence of a single active layer polymer–nanocrystal hybrid light-emitting diode with inversion symmetry

Abstract

A hybrid polymer-nanocrystal (NC) light-emitting diode (LED) device with a single active layer structure is simply fabricated by a spin coating. From a high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) study, each PVK polymer particle is observed to be capped with TPBi molecules and CdSe/ZnS NCs are mainly distributed along the circumference of PVK and TPBi surfaces, resulting in a core-shell polymer-NC hybrid of [CdSe/ZnS]/TPBi/[CdSe/ZnS]/PVK. An Al/[CdSe/ZnS]/TPBi/[CdSe/ZnS]/PVK/indium-tin oxide(ITO)/glass LED shows electroluminescence (EL) centered at around 585 nm at the forward bias of +10 V, which clearly reveals that CdSe/ZnS NCs existing at the interface between PVK and TPBi act as recombination centers for excitons. In particular, EL can be observed at both forward bias and reverse bias, and this means that this device with an isotropic distribution of NCs has an inversion symmetry.