Spin-Valley-Locked Electroluminescence for High-Performance Circularly Polarized Organic Light-Emitting Diodes.

Circularly polarized (CP) organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) have attracted attention in potential applications, including novel display and photonic technologies. However, conventional approaches cannot meet the requirements of device performance, such as high dissymmetry factor, high directionality, narrowband emission, simplified device structure, and low costs. Here, we demonstrate spin-valley-locked CP-OLEDs without chiral emitters but based on photonic spin-orbit coupling, where photons with opposite CP characteristics are emitted from different optical valleys. These spin-valley-locked OLEDs exhibit a narrowband emission of 16 nm, a high external quantum efficiency of 3.65%, a maximum luminance of near 98,000 cd/m2, and a gEL of up to 1.80, which are among the best performances of active single-crystal CP-OLEDs, achieved with a simple device structure. This strategy opens an avenue for practical applications toward three-dimensional displays and on-chip CP-OLEDs.