Direct identification of interfacial degradation in blue OLEDs using nanoscale chemical depth profiling

Abstract Understanding the degradation mechanism of organic light-emitting diodes (OLED) is essential to improve device performance and stability. OLED failure, if not process-related, arises mostly from chemical instability. However, the challenges of sampling from nanoscale organic layers and interfaces with enough analytical information has hampered identification of degradation products and mechanisms. Here, we present a high-resolution diagnostic method of OLED degradation using an Orbitrap mass spectrometer equipped with a gas cluster ion beam to gently desorb nanometre levels of materials, providing unambiguous molecular information with 7-nm depth resolution. We chemically depth profile and analyse blue phosphorescent and thermally-activated delayed fluorescent (TADF) OLED devices at different degradation levels. For OLED devices with short operational lifetimes, dominant chemical degradation mainly relate to oxygen loss of molecules that occur at the interface between emission and electron transport layers (EML/ETL) where exciton distribution is maximised, confirmed by emission zone measurements. We also show approximately one order of magnitude increase in lifetime of devices with slightly modified host materials, which present minimal EML/ETL interfacial degradation and show the method can provide insight for future material and device architecture development.