245 MHz bandwidth organic light-emitting diodes used in a gigabit optical wireless data link

Abstract

Organic optoelectronic devices combine high-performance, simple fabrication and distinctive form factors. They are widely integrated in smart devices and wearables as flexible, high pixel density organic light emitting diode (OLED) displays, and may be scaled to large area by roll-to-roll printing for lightweight solar power systems. Exceptionally thin and flexible organic devices may enable future integrated bioelectronics and security features. However, as a result of their low charge mobility, these are generally thought to be slow devices with microsecond response times, thereby limiting their full scope of potential applications. By investigating the factors limiting their bandwidth and overcoming them, we demonstrate here exceptionally fast OLEDs with bandwidths in the hundreds of MHz range. This opens up a wide range of potential applications in spectroscopy, communications, sensing and optical ranging. As an illustration of this, we have demonstrated visible light communication using OLEDs with data rates exceeding 1 gigabit per second.

Organic LEDs (OLEDs) have generally been considered to be slow devices. Through engineering the structure and materials of OLEDs, the authors achieve a breakthrough in the high-speed operation of OLEDs and demonstrate a 1 Gbps optical wireless link using the OLEDs.