Self-absorption in a light-emitting electrochemical cell based on an ionic transition metal complex

We report on the quantitative and qualitative effects of self-absorption in light-emitting electrochemical cells (LECs) based on ionic transition metal complexes (iTMCs), as measured in-situ during electric driving. A yellow-emitting iTMC-LEC comprising an active material thickness of 95 nm suffers a 4% loss of the emission intensity to self-absorption, whereas the same type of device but with a larger active-material thickness of 1 μm will lose a significant 40% of the light intensity. We also find that the LEC-specific effect of doping-induced self-absorption can result in a drift of the emission spectrum with time for iTMC-LECs, but note that the overall magnitude of doping-induced self-absorption is much smaller than for conjugated-polymer LECs.