Triple Ligand Engineered Gold Nanoclusters with Enhanced Fluorescence and Device Compatibility for Efficient Electroluminescence Light-Emitting Diodes

Ye Tian; Weijia Zheng; Xiaoyu Zhang; Yinghui Wang; Yanwei Xiao; Dong Yao; Hao Zhang

doi:10.1021/acs.nanolett.3c00725

Triple Ligand Engineered Gold Nanoclusters with Enhanced Fluorescence and Device Compatibility for Efficient Electroluminescence Light-Emitting Diodes

Nano Lett. 2023 May 24;23(10):4423-4430. doi: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.3c00725. Epub 2023 May 2.

Authors

Ye Tian¹, Weijia Zheng², Xiaoyu Zhang³, Yinghui Wang⁴, Yanwei Xiao¹, Dong Yao¹, Hao Zhang^{1

5}

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Supramolecular Structure and Materials, College of Chemistry, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, P. R. China.
² Department of Chemistry, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC V8P 5C2, Canada.
³ School of Materials Science & Engineering, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, P. R. China.
⁴ College of Physics, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, P. R. China.
⁵ Green Catalysis Center, College of Chemistry, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, 450001, P. R. China.

PMID: 37129890
DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.3c00725

Abstract

Gold nanoclusters (Au NCs) are potential emitters for electroluminescent light-emitting diodes (EL-LEDs) but restricted by the limited photoluminescence quantum yield (PLQY) and poor device compatibility. Herein, triple ligand engineered Au NCs enable the fabrication of Au NC-based LEDs with improved EL efficiency. Rigidified triple ligand shells greatly reduce the nonradiative transition and thus increase the PLQY of Au NCs from 2.1 to 73.4%. Most importantly, this strategy significantly improves the compatibility between Au NCs and charge transport materials in EL-LED fabrication. As a result, the EL-LEDs reach a maximum brightness of 1104 cd/m² and an external quantum efficiency of 5.1%, which is the highest recorded for any reported Au NC-based EL-LEDs.

Keywords: electroluminescence; fluorescence; gold nanocluster; light-emitting diode; surface engineering.