Enhanced Direct White Light Emission Efficiency in Quantum Dot Light-Emitting Diodes via Embedded Ferroelectric Islands Structure

White light emission is of great importance in our daily life as it is the primary source of light indoor and outdoor as well as day and night. Among various materials and lighting technologies, intensive efforts have been made to quantum dots based-light-emitting diode (QD-LEDs, or QLEDs) because of outstanding optical properties, facile synthesis, and bandgap tunability of QDs. Despite the fact that QLEDs are able to present various colors in a visible range, realizing efficient direct white light emission is a challenge as white light emission can only be achievable through stacking and patterning of QD films or mixing of different sizes of QDs. This inevitably involves energy band mismatch at interfaces, leading to degradation of device performance. Here, a new effective method to improve white QLED performances through embedding a ferroelectric islands structure is introduced, which induces an electric field to effectively modulate the energy band at the junction interface. The formation of a favorable energy landscape leads to efficient charge transport, improved radiative recombination, and consequently high external quantum efficiency in the white QLEDs. In addition, it is demonstrated that this new approach is proved to be effective in different color temperatures ranging from 3000 to over 120 000 K.

Automated summary

Researchers have successfully improved the performance of white QLEDs by embedding a ferroelectric islands structure, which induces an electric field to effectively modulate the energy band at the junction interface, leading to efficient charge transport, improved radiative recombination, and high external quantum efficiency in the white QLEDs.