OLED-Based Infrared-to-Visible Up-Conversion Devices

The ability to convert energy over a wide band of the light spectrum, which includes visible and infrared, has tremendous value. Silicon-based photodetectors have currently become mainstream technology. However, solution-processable photoactive materials such as halide perovskites and polymers with excellent photosensitivity, bandgap tunability, and solution processability provide an attractive material system to realize such inexpensive photodetectors. In this talk, I will first discuss recent progress in my research employing solution-processable low-bandgap materials including halide perovskites as well as polymers with light absorption by around 1000 nm similar to Si for alternative low-cost photodetectors. I will then describe our efforts to investigate an infrared-sensitive organic light emitting diode (OLED) as an alternative technology for infrared imaging, functioning as an infrared-to-visible up-converter, with various cost-effective infrared sensitizers such as PbS quantum dots, organic semiconductors, and halide perovskites. I believe these works will lead to a paradigm shift in the future imaging technology and are of great interest to the general scientific community.