Electrically conductive polyaniline as hole-injection layer for MEH-PPV:BT based polymer light emitting diodes

چکیده مقاله

Polyaniline (PANI) was synthesized by oxidative polymerization of aniline at different temperatures (5, 10, 15, 20 and 25 ◦C). The influence of polymerization temperature on sheet resistance of PANI was investigated, and the one prepared at 15 ◦C which showed lowest resistivity was chosen for further analysis. PANI was subsequently used as hole-injection layer (HIL) in polymer light emitting diodes (PLEDs) with structure of poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET)/indium tin oxide (ITO)/PANI/MEH-PPV:BT/aluminum (Al). The PLEDs with emission layer made from a blend of poly [2-methoxy-5-(2-ethyl-hexyloxy)-1,4-phenylene vinylene] (MEH-PPV) and an electron transporting material, benzothiadiazole (BT), were fabricated at room conditions without using glove boxes. Our results showed an improvement in performance of our PANI-based fabricated PLEDs (PET/ITO/PANI/MEH-PPV:BT/Al) compared to the conventional devices that use poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):polystyrene sulfonate (PET/ITO/PEDOT:PSS/MEH-PPV:BT/Al) as their HIL. The hole injection barrier height (ϕ) of the fabricated PLEDs were then estimated using the Fowler–Nordheim (FN) field-emission tunneling theory and revealed that the barrier height decreases by increasing the BT concentration in the MEH-PPV:BT blend layer.