Thermally Decomposable KBH4as an Efficient Electron Injection Material for Organic Light-Emitting Diodes

In this work, KBH4 was studied as a novel electron injection material (EIM) for organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). Optimized OLEDs using KBH4 as the EIM showed a high efficiency of 11.0 cd/A at 1000 cd/m2, comparable to that of a control device using LiF (9.2 cd/A). The lifetime of the device with KBH4 was also comparable to that of the control device. Thermal evaporation behavior was studied by thermodynamic calculation and X-ray photoemission spectroscopy (XPS), demonstrating that the improved electron injection was attributable to the low-work-function metallic K released by the thermal decomposition of KBH4.