Advances and Challenges in White Light-Emitting Electrochemical Cells

Since the birth of light-emitting electrochemical cells (LECs) in 1995, white LECs (WLECs) still represent a milestone. To date, over 50 contributions have been reported, presenting record WLECs with brightness of up to 10 000 cd m⁻², efficiencies of >10 cd A⁻¹, and excellent color rendering index >90 in different contributions. This is achieved following three main strategies focused on modifying: i) the design of the emitters, that is, emissive aggregates, multiemissive mechanism, multifluorophoric emitters; ii) the active layer composition, that is, host–guest, multilayers, exciplex- and electroplex-like emitting species systems; and iii) the device architecture, that is, tandem, photoactive filters, and microcavity/interfacial dipole effects. Herein, all of them are comprehensively discussed with respect to the above strategies in the frame of the type of emitters employed. Overall, this work highlights both the advances and challenges of the WLEC field.