Solution-Processed Organic Optical Upconversion Device

Imaging in the near-infrared (NIR) is getting increasingly important for applications such as machine vision or medical imaging. NIR-to-visible optical upconverters consist of a monolithic stack of a NIR photodetector and a visible light-emitting unit. Such devices convert NIR light directly to visible light and allow capturing a NIR image with an ordinary camera. Here, five-layer organic solution-processed upconverters (OUCs) are reported which consist of a squaraine dye NIR photodetector and a fluorescent poly(para-phenylene vinylene) copolymer (super yellow)-based organic light-emitting diode (OLED) or light-emitting electrochemical cell (LEC), respectively. Both OLED-OUCs and LEC-OUCs convert NIR light at 980 nm to yellow light at around 575 nm with comparable device metrics of performance, such as a turn-on voltage of 2.7-2.9 V and a NIR-to-visible photon conversion efficiency of around 1.6%. Because of the presence of a salt in the emitting layer, the LEC OUC is a temporally dynamic device. The LEC OUC turn-on and relaxation behavior is characterized in detail. It is demonstrated that a particular ionic distribution and thereby the LEC OUC status can be frozen by storing the device in the presence of a small voltage applied. This provides a test chart for quantitative measurements.