| Enhancing Charge Injection and Device Integrity in Organic LEDs (Phase I)
Investigating Organization
Agiltron Inc.
Principal Investigator(s)
Mr. King Wang, qwang@agiltron.com, (978) 694-1006 ext. 14
Subcontractor
None
Funding Source
Small Business Innovation R&D, Phase I
Award
DOE Share: $100,000
Contract Period
7/13/04 - 4/12/05
Organic lighting emitting diode (OLED) based sold state lighting is a candidate technology that offers significant gains in power efficiency, color quality, and life time at lower cost and less environmental impact than traditional incandescent and fluorescent lighting. However, current achievements in OLED devices have not yet realized the power efficiency and lifetime requirements for general lighting applications. Two important factors limiting performance are on-efficiency and non-balanced charge injection leading to poor device stability.
The goal of this program is to develop innovative, low cost OLED anode surface modification technology, which will increase device energy efficiency by 5 to10 times while also significantly improving device stability and lifetime simultaneously. OLED anode (ITO) modification using an ultra-thin cross-linked hole transporting layer is planned by means of a low-cost self assembly approach. Cross-linkable, high hole transporting molecules will be synthesized and application methods commensurate with automated processing will be developed.
Air-stable, cross-linkable, high mobility hole transporting molecules have been synthesized with a high yield. These molecules are being spin-coated on conventional ITO substrates, on which multilayer OLED structures will be fabricated. Improvements in device energy efficiency and lifetime by the novel ITO surface modification layer will be evaluated and compared with OLED devices built on bare ITO substrates and substrates coated with other ITO modification agents. The coating process will be scaled to coat large-area rigid or flexible ITO substrates under an ambient environment using low-cost automated dip-coating or roll-to-roll coating processes, which are under development.
High performance OLEDs will be extremely beneficial for solid state lighting, high brightness image displays, sign indicators, automobile displays, and wearable electronics.
Content dated 2/08 |
