High-Efficiency, Low Turn-on Voltage Blue-Violet Quantum-Dot-Based Light-Emitting Diodes

We report high-efficiency blue-violet quantum-dot-based light-emitting diodes (QD-LEDs) by using high quantum yield ZnCdS/ZnS graded coreshell QDs with proper surface ligands. Replacing the oleic acid ligands on the as-synthesized QDs with shorter 1-octanethiol ligands is found to cause a 2-fold increase in the electron mobility within the QD film. Such a ligand exchange also results in an even greater increase in hole injection into the QD layer, thus improving the overall charge balance in the LEDs and yielding a 70% increase in quantum efficiency. Using 1-octanethiol capped QDs, we have obtained a maximum luminance (L) of 7600 cd/m2 and a maximum external quantum efficiency (eta(EQE)) of (10.3 +/- 0.9)% (with the highest at 12.2%) for QD-LEDs devices with an electroluminescence peak at 443 nm. Similar quantum efficiencies are also obtained for other blue/violet QD-LEDs with peak emission at 455 and 433 nm. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of blue QD-LEDs with eta(EQE) > 10%. Combined with the low turn-on voltage of similar to 2.6 V, these blue-violet ZnCdS/ZnS QD-LEDs show great promise for use in next-generation full-color displays.