Driving current and temperature dependent magnetic-field modulated electroluminescence in Alq3-based organic light emitting diode

Driving current and temperature dependences of magnetic-field modulated electroluminescence (EL) in tris(8-hydroxyquinoline) aluminum (Alq3)-based OLEDs have been thoroughly investigated. At low temperatures, the applied magnetic-field induces a sharp increase of the EL in low field regime (B ⩽ 35 mT) and a slow but apparent decrease at high fields (35 ⩽ B ⩽ 500 mT). The low-field increase in EL (LFE) survives at all working temperatures while the high-field decrease (HFE) gradually disappears as temperature is increased. At a given temperature, the higher the current level, the smaller LFE and stronger HFE are observed. To explain the observed MFEs a composite model based on magnetic-field dependent singlet-to-triplet conversion of electron-hole pairs and magnetic-field mediated triplet–triplet annihilation process is proposed in this paper.