Publication date: 15th December 2025
Light-emitting electrochemical cells (LECs) can be fabricated by scalable printing under ambient conditions using widely available raw materials, making it a material- and resource-efficient light-emitting technology. The LEC can feature a robust three‑layer architecture in which the active layer (AL), commonly a blend of an electroluminescent organic semiconductor (OSC) and a salt dissolved in an ion transporter, is sandwiched between two electrodes. Under applied bias, the mobile ions in the AL redistribute to form p‑ and n‑doped regions, whose junction delivers the light emission.1
This study investigates the influence of the molecular weight of a hydroxyl‑capped trimethylolpropane ethoxylate (TMPE‑OH) ion transporter on the time to reach minimum voltage for an LEC, comprising KCF3SO3 as the salt and Super Yellow as the OSC. We find that the employment of the highest molecular weight TMPE-OH (Mn = 1014 g/mol) resulted in a much faster time to minimum voltage than two lower molecular weight counterparts (Mn = 170 and 450 g/mol). We employed impedance spectroscopy to show that the AL comprising the highest molecular weight TMPE-OH exhibited the highest ionic conductivity, and differential scanning calorimetry to show that it also featured the highest dissolution capacity for the KCF3SO3 salt. This implies that the AL based on the highest molecular weight TMPE-OH exhibits the highest concentration of mobile ions, which in turn rationalizes its higher ion conductivity and the lowest minimum voltage in LEC devices.
The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Wallenberg Initiative Materials Science for Sustainability (WISE) funded by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation (WISE-AP02-PD21).
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