Researchers from the University of St Andrews, led by Prof. Ifor Samuel, have designed an OLED based communication device that achieves a record data rate of 3.2Gbps.
To realize this achievement, the researchers developed high-speed red, green and blue emitting OLED devices, on a single substrate. Using wavelength division multiplexing (WDM), the three OLED devices are emitting at the same time. By selecting fluorescent materials with nanosecond emission lifetimes and little overlap between their emission spectra, the researchers achieved a -6b dB electrical bandwidth of over 100 Mhz.
To minimize the spectral overlap, the researchers used optical microcavities in a top-emission OLED architecture.
The researchers say that this results proves the WDM with integrated RGB OLED pixels is a useful way to increase the data transmission rate of such a visible-light OLED communication system.
