High Performance Top-Emission Quantum Dot Light-Emitting Diodes with Mg-Doped ZnO Nanoparticles Used as an Electron Transport Layer

In this paper, we reported superior performance of solution-processed top-emission quantum dot light-emitting diodes (TE-QLEDs) with Mg-doped ZnO nanoparticle (NP) electron transport layer (ETL). The Mg-doped ZnO NPs were synthesized by the sol-gel method. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) analysis of the Mg-doped ZnO NPs with 0 wt%, 5 wt%, 10 wt%, and 15 wt% Mg-doping concentrations revealed average diameters of 5.86 nm, 5.33 nm, 4.52 nm, and 4.37 nm, respectively. The maximum luminance, the current efficiency, and external quantum efficiency (EQE) were 178,561.8 cd/m², 56.0 cd/A, and 14.43%, respectively. However, for the best performance of TE-QLED without Mg-doping in the ZnO NPs, the maximum luminance was only 101,523.4 cd/m², the luminous efficiency was 27.8 cd/A, and the EQE was 6.91%. The improvement of the performance is attributed to the suppression of electron transfer by an increase in the energy barrier between the cathode and Mg-doped ZnO NP ETL and the reduction in the Hall mobility of electron with increasing the Mg-doping in the ZnO NPs, resulting in the enhanced charge balance in the quantum dot (QD) emitting layer (EML).