Degradation of phosphorescent organic light-emitting diodes under pulsed current stressing

•Stressing OLEDs under pulsed 50 mA/cm2 led to increases in leakage and voltage.•The slow luminance decay is governed predominantly by electrical excitation.•Pulsed stressing with 10% duty cycle improved the effective half life by only 15%.•Adding a reverse bias led to suppressed leakage and reduced luminance decay.•Self-heating plays a minor role in OLED degradation even at high injection levels.

The electrical and optical degradation of green phosphorescent organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) stressed under 50 mA/cm2 pulsed currents with 10–50% duty cycles was studied. The stressing resulted in significant increases in low-bias leakage current and operational voltage. The luminance evolution comprised an initial rapid decay regime and a subsequent slow decay regime, and only the latter was governed predominantly by electrical excitation. Compared to continuous-wave stressing, pulsed stressing with 10% duty cycle improved the effective half life by only ∼15%, indicating that self-heating plays a minor role in the performance degradation process. Adding a reverse bias component to the pulsed current led to suppressed low-bias leakage and current-induced luminance decay due to defect removal and alleviated charge build-up.

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