Luminance degradation and recovery studies in Alq3 based Organic light emitting diodes

Though organic light emitting diodes are being commercialized in many applications, issues relating to lifetime and degradation remain as fundamental concerns limiting performance. A coherent understanding of degradation mechanisms is yet to emerge. We focus on intrinsic degradation of high quality Alq3 based diodes due to electrical stressing. We monitor progressive luminance degradation and recovery by introducing well defined relaxation time windows in the current stress cycles. The method helps to clearly distinguish between recoverable and permanent degradation systematically. The voltage shift due to degradation and recovery is also monitored as a function of time. Further, we introduce a method of reconstructing the transients of the recoverable part using progressive isolated current pulses as a probe. The recovery of degradation is related to the charging and discharging of the traps in the device and our method provides a technique of measuring significant parameters of trapping through luminance transients. The origin and distinguishing features of the two types of degradation are discussed.