Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Article
  • Published:

Bright short-wavelength infrared organic light-emitting devices

Nature Photonics volume 16, pages 752–761 (2022)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Organic LEDs that emit light in the short-wavelength infrared (SWIR) region, which spans the 1–2 μm region, are attractive for applications in biosensors, biomedical imaging and spectroscopy, and surveillance. However, fabrication of such devices with high radiance has not yet been achieved owing to an intrinsic limitation imposed by the energy-gap law, which leads to extremely low emission efficiencies. Here, we report that acceptor–donor–acceptor-type molecules with high coplanarity, rigid π-conjugated backbones, an extremely small reorganization energy and an electron–phonon coupling factor are capable of simultaneously providing a strongly suppressed non-radiative recombination rate and a high operation stability at high current density. We achieve electrically driven SWIR organic LEDs with an irradiance of up to 3.9 mW cm−2 (corresponding to 7% of direct sunlight infrared irradiance). These findings should open a wide avenue to a new class of organic SWIR light sources for a broad range of applications.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1: Chemical structures and theoretical calculation results.
Fig. 2: Optical properties and photophysical studies of representative A–D–A molecules.
Fig. 3: Rate constants of radiative and non-radiative recombination and PLQY as well as their correlations with the microscopic parameters.
Fig. 4: Performance characteristics and infrared image of the SWIR OLEDs.
Fig. 5: Demonstration of SWIR OLEDs for applications in semiconductor wafer-quality inspection.

Similar content being viewed by others

Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. Source data are provided with this paper.

References

  1. Tang, C. W. & VanSlyke, S. A. Organic electroluminescent diodes. Appl. Phys. Lett. 51, 913–915 (1987).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  2. Burroughes, J. H. et al. Light-emitting diodes based on conjugated polymers. Nature 347, 539–541 (1990).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  3. Qian, G. et al. Simple and efficient near-infrared organic chromophores for light-emitting diodes with single electroluminescent emission above 1000 nm. Adv. Mater. 21, 111–116 (2009).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Zampetti, A., Minotto, A. & Cacialli, F. Near-infrared (NIR) organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs): challenges and opportunities. Adv. Func. Mater. 29, 1807623 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Zheng, Y. & Zhu, X. Recent progress in emerging near-infrared emitting materials for light-emitting diode applications. Org. Mater. 2, 253–281 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Konstantatos, G. et al. Ultrasensitive solution-cast quantum dot photodetectors. Nature 442, 180–183 (2006).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  7. Lu, H., Carroll, G. M., Neale, N. R. & Beard, M. C. Infrared quantum dots: progress, challenges, and opportunities. ACS Nano 13, 939–953 (2019).

    Google Scholar 

  8. Murphy, C. J. Optical sensing with quantum dots. Anal. Chem. 74, 520A–526A (2002).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Smith, A. M., Mancini, M. C. & Nie, S. Second window for in vivo imaging. Nat. Nanotechnol. 4, 710–711 (2009).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  10. Wilson, R. H., Nadeau, K. P., Jaworski, F. B., Tromberg, B. J. & Durkin, A. J. Review of short-wave infrared spectroscopy and imaging methods for biological tissue characterization. J. Biomed. Opt. 20, 030901 (2015).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  11. Diao, S. et al. Fluorescence imaging in vivo at wavelengths beyond 1,500 nm. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 54, 14758–14762 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Bruns, O. T. et al. Next-generation in vivo optical imaging with short-wave infrared quantum dots. Nat. Biomed. Eng. 1, 0056 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Minotto, A. et al. Towards efficient near-infrared fluorescent organic light-emitting diodes. Light Sci. Appl. 10, 18–27 (2021).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  14. Wu, J. When group-III nitrides go infrared: new properties and perspectives. J. Appl. Phys. 106, 011101 (2009).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  15. Krier, A., Chub, D., Krier, S. E., Hopkinson, M. & Hill, G. Light sources for wavelengths >2 μm grown by MBE on InP using a strain relaxed buffer. IEE Proc. Optoelectron. 145, 292–296 (1998).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Someya, T., Bao, Z. & Malliaras, G. The rise of plastic bioelectronics. Nature 540, 379–385 (2016).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  17. Tessler, N., Medvedev, V., Kazes, M., Kan, S. & Banin, U. Efficient near-infrared polymer nanocrystal light-emitting diodes. Science 295, 1506–1508 (2002).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  18. Qi, J., Qiao, W. & Wang, Z. Y. Advances in organic near-infrared materials and emerging applications. Chem. Rec. 16, 1531–1548 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Ho, C. L., Li, H. & Wong, W. Y. Red to near-infrared organometallic phosphorescent dyes for OLED applications. J. Organomet. Chem. 751, 261–285 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Ai, X. et al. Efficient radical-based light-emitting diodes with doublet emission. Nature 563, 536–540 (2018).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  21. Tao, R. et al. High-efficiency near-infrared organic light-emitting devices based on an iridium complex with negligible efficiency roll-off. J. Mater. Chem. C 1, 6446–6454 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Wei, Y. C. et al. Overcoming the energy gap law in near-infrared OLEDs by exciton–vibration decoupling. Nat. Photonics 14, 570–577 (2020).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  23. Suzuki, H. Infrared electroluminescence from an organic ionic dye containing no rare-earth ions. Appl. Phys. Lett. 80, 3256–3258 (2002).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  24. Chen, M. et al. 1 micron wavelength photo- and electroluminescence from a conjugated polymer. Appl. Phys. Lett. 84, 3570–3572 (2004).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  25. Minotto, A. et al. Efficient near-infrared electroluminescence at 840 nm with “metal-free” small-molecule:polymer blends. Adv. Mater. 30, 1706584 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Qian, G. et al. Band gap tunable, donor–acceptor–donor charge-transfer heteroquinoid-based chromophores: near infrared photoluminescence and electroluminescence. Chem. Mater. 20, 6208–6216 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Yao, L. et al. Highly efficient near-infrared organic light-emitting diode based on a butterfly-shaped donor–acceptor chromophore with strong solid-state fluorescence and a large proportion of radiative excitons. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 53, 2119–2123 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Kim, D. H. et al. High efficiency electroluminescence and amplified spontaneous emission from a thermally activated delayed fluorescent near-infrared emitter. Nat. Photonics 12, 98–104 (2018).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  29. Yu, Y. et al. Near-infrared electroluminescence beyond 800 nm with high efficiency and radiance from anthracene cored emitters. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 59, 21578–21584 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. Tregnago, G., Steckler, T. T., Fenwick, O., Andersson, M. R. & Cacialli, F. Thia- and selenadiazole containing polymers for near-infrared light-emitting diodes. J. Mater. Chem. C 3, 2792–2797 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  31. Lin, Y. et al. An electron acceptor challenging fullerenes for efficient polymer solar cells. Adv. Mater. 27, 1170–1174 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  32. Liu, S. et al. High-efficiency organic solar cells with low non-radiative recombination loss and low energetic disorder. Nat. Photonics 14, 300–305 (2020).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  33. Rau, U. Reciprocity relation between photovoltaic quantum efficiency and electroluminescent emission of solar cells. Phys. Rev. B 76, 085303 (2007).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  34. Lee, J. et al. Bandgap narrowing in non-fullerene acceptors: single atom substitution leads to high optoelectronic response beyond 1000 nm. Adv. Energy Mater. 8, 1801212 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  35. Roncali, J. Molecular engineering of the band gap of π-conjugated systems: facing technological applications. Macromol. Rapid Commun. 28, 1761–1775 (2007).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  36. Shuai, Z. G. & Peng, Q. Organic light-emitting diodes: theoretical understanding of highly efficient materials and development of computational methodology. Natl Sci. Rev. 4, 224–239 (2017).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  37. Benduhn, J. et al. Intrinsic non-radiative voltage losses in fullerene-based organic solar cells. Nat. Energy 2, 17053 (2017).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  38. Perdigón-Toro, L. et al. Excitons dominate the emission from PM6:Y6 solar cells, but this does not help the open-circuit voltage of the device. ACS Energy Lett. 6, 557–564 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  39. Jortner, J. Temperature dependent activation energy for electron transfer between biological molecules. J. Chem. Phys. 64, 4860–4867 (1976).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  40. Gould, I. R. et al. Radiative and nonradiative electron transfer in contact radical-ion pairs. Chem. Phys. 176, 439–456 (1993).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  41. Azzouzi, M. et al. Nonradiative energy losses in bulk-heterojunction organic photovoltaics. Phys. Rev. X 8, 031055 (2018).

    Google Scholar 

  42. Wilson, J. S. et al. The energy gap law for triplet states in Pt-containing conjugated polymers and monomers. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 123, 9412–9417 (2001).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  43. Cave, R. J. & Newton, M. D. Generalization of the Mulliken–Hush treatment for the calculation of electron transfer matrix elements. Chem. Phys. Lett. 249, 15–19 (1996).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  44. Zhu, W. et al. Crystallography, morphology, electronic structure, and transport in non-fullerene/non-Indacenodithienothiophene polymer: Y6 solar cells. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 142, 14532–14547 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  45. Zhang, G. et al. Delocalization of exciton and electron wavefunction in non-fullerene acceptor molecules enables efficient organic solar cells. Nat. Commun. 11, 3943 (2020).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  46. Yao, H. et al. Design, synthesis, and photovoltaic characterization of a small molecular acceptor with an ultra-narrow band gap. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 56, 3045–3049 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  47. Intemann, J. J. et al. Molecular weight effect on the absorption, charge carrier mobility, and photovoltaic performance of an indacenodiselenophene-based ladder-type polymer. Chem. Mater. 25, 3188–3195 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  48. Li, Y. et al. Universal electroluminescence at voltages below the energy gap in organic light-emitting diodes. Adv. Optical Mater. 8, 2101149 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  49. Liu, X. K. et al. Metal halide perovskites for light-emitting diodes. Nat. Mater. 20, 10–21 (2021).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  50. Kuik, M. et al. 25th Anniversary Article: Charge transport and recombination in polymer light-emitting diodes. Adv. Mater. 26, 512–531 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  51. Wang, W. et al. Achieving efficient polymer solar cells based on near-infrared absorptive backbone twisted non-fullerene acceptors through a synergistic strategy of indacenodiselenophene fused-ring core and chlorinated terminal group. ACS Appl. Energy Mater. 5, 1322–1330 (2022).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  52. Li, C. et al. Non-fullerene acceptors with branched side chains and improved molecular packing to exceed 18% efficiency in organic solar cells. Nat. Energy 6, 605–613 (2021).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  53. Jiang, K. et al. Alkyl chain tuning of small molecule acceptors for efficient organic solar cells. Joule 3, 3020–3033 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  54. Cui, L.-S. et al. Fast spin-flip enables efficient and stable organic electroluminescence from charge-transfer states. Nat. Photonics 14, 636–642 (2020).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  55. Frisch, M. J. et al. Gaussian 16 revision C.01 (Gaussian, Inc., 2016).

  56. Lu, T. & Chen, F. Multiwfn: a multifunctional wavefunction analyzer. J. Comput. Chem. 33, 580–592 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

Hongbin Wu thanks the National Natural Science Foundation of China (no. 52273177, 91333206 and 51521002) for financial support. Y.X. acknowledges the National Natural Science Foundation of China (no. 52003087) for financial support. C.G. thanks the Shaanxi Key Scientific and Technological Innovation Team Project (no. 2016KCT-28) and Shaanxi Key Project in Industrial Field (no. 2017ZDXM-GY-046) for financial support. W.D. acknowledges support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (no. 62004069). X.-K.C. acknowledges the New Faculty Start-up Grant of the City University of Hong Kong (7200709 and 9610547). We thank D. Li for assistance with the OLED operational lifetime measurements.

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Yuan Xie, Wansheng Liu, Wanyuan Deng, Haimei Wu.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Polymer Optoelectronic Materials and Devices, State Key Laboratory of Luminescent Materials and Devices, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, People’s Republic of China

    Yuan Xie, Wansheng Liu, Wanyuan Deng, Yichuan Si, Hongbin Wu, Junbiao Peng & Yong Cao

  2. Xi’an Key Laboratory of Liquid Crystal and Organic Photovoltaic Materials, State Key Laboratory of Fluorine & Nitrogen Chemicals, Xi’an Modern Chemistry Research Institute, Xi’an, People’s Republic of China

    Haimei Wu, Weiping Wang & Chao Gao

  3. Key Laboratory of Polymer Chemistry and Physics of Ministry of Education, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Peking University, Beijing, People’s Republic of China

    Xiaowei Zhan

  4. Department of Chemistry, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, People’s Republic of China

    Xian-Kai Chen

  5. Hong Kong Institute for Advanced Study, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, People’s Republic of China

    Xian-Kai Chen

Authors
  1. Yuan Xie
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Wansheng Liu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Wanyuan Deng
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Haimei Wu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Weiping Wang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Yichuan Si
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  7. Xiaowei Zhan
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  8. Chao Gao
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  9. Xian-Kai Chen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  10. Hongbin Wu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  11. Junbiao Peng
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  12. Yong Cao
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

Y.X., Hongbin Wu and C.G. conceived the idea. Y.X. and W.L. fabricated the SWIR OLEDs devices. C.G., Haimei Wu and W.W. designed and synthesized the i-IDSe- and IDSe-series A–D–A-type emitters. Y.X. performed the theoretical calculations and the numerical simulations. X.-K.C. performed the theoretical calculations and provided feedback on the manuscript. Y.X., W.L. and W.D. performed the device characterization and optical absorption measurements. W.D. and W.L. performed the time-resolved PL decay measurements. Y.X. and W.D. performed the recombination-rate calculations. W.L. and Y.X. acquired the SWIR EL photographs. Y.S. set up the optical communication system. W.L. and Y.X. carried out optical communication demonstration, wafer-quality inspection and operational lifetime tests. X.Z. and J.P. discussed the results and commented on the manuscript. Hongbin Wu, Y.X., C.G., W.D., W.L. and X.-K.C. contributed to the writing of the manuscript. All authors discussed the experiments and results. Hongbin Wu, C.G. and Y.C. supervised the project and advised on device optimization.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Yuan Xie, Chao Gao, Xian-Kai Chen or Hongbin Wu.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Peer review

Peer review information

Nature Photonics thanks Juan Qiao, Xiaozhang Zhu and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

Additional information

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–17, Notes 1–3, Tables 1–3 and Methods.

Supplementary Video 1

Demonstration of real-time through-biological-tissue audio signals transmission.

Supplementary Video 2

Demonstration of pulsed signals transmission.

Source data

Source Data Fig. 1

Statistical source data for Fig. 1d and the source data of the output of Gaussian 16 (ES64L-G16RevC.01).

Source Data Fig. 2

Statistical source data for the absorption and PL spectra of the emitters, normalized reduced emission spectra and modelled PLQYs.

Source Data Fig. 3

Statistical source data for the measured and calculated rate constants for radiative and non-radiative recombination and the PLQY of each emitter.

Source Data Fig. 4

Statistical source data for EL spectra, J–R–V characteristics and EQE–J curves of SWIR OLEDs.

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Xie, Y., Liu, W., Deng, W. et al. Bright short-wavelength infrared organic light-emitting devices. Nat. Photon. 16, 752–761 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-022-01069-w

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-022-01069-w

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing