SBIR Phase I: Novel Encapsulation Process for Organic Light Emitting Diodes

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project proposes a novel method to encapsulate organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs). Compared with the inorganic counterparts, OLEDs have the advantages of low-cost, large-area, small footprint, flexible usage, and low-temperature processing. However, currently, OLEDs suffers long-term stability problem due to attacks of environmental oxygen and moisture. The objective of this proposal is to utilize an advanced thin film deposition process to encapsulate OLED. This process will allow for low temperature deposition of highly transparent, conformal and pinhole-free amorphous oxide barrier films to significantly reduce oxygen and moisture permeation rate and prolong the lifetime of the OLED. This work will lead to an advanced and optimized OLED encapsulation process and tools for a production-scale OLED deposition module. Rapid progress on the development of OLED makes it possible to envision large-scale commercial applications in the near future ranging from large-size flat-screen display, flexible display, and even solid-state lighting. Currently, the interest in organic electronics has been fueled by the need for low cost, high volume alternatives to inorganic devices. Besides OLED, thanks to their low cost and advantageous mechanical properties, organic electronics will find wide applications as flexible, lightweight and distributed electronic and optoelectronic devices for low-end data storage electronic tags and labels (e.g., barcodes), smart cards, flexible battery, photovoltaics, imaging, general purpose lighting, and telecommunication components.