Approaches for Long Lifetime Organic Light Emitting Diodes.

Organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) have been well known for their potential usage in the lighting and display industry. The device efficiency and lifetime have improved considerably in the last three decades. However, for commercial applications, operational lifetime still lies as one of the looming challenges. In this review paper, an in-depth description of the various factors which affect OLED lifetime, and the related solutions is attempted to be consolidated. Notably, all the known intrinsic and extrinsic degradation phenomena and failure mechanisms, which include the presence of dark spot, high heat during device operation, substrate fracture, downgrading luminance, moisture attack, oxidation, corrosion, electron induced migrations, photochemical degradation, electrochemical degradation, electric breakdown, thermomechanical failures, thermal breakdown/degradation, and presence of impurities within the materials and evaporator chamber are reviewed. Light is also shed on the materials and device structures which are developed in order to obtain along with developed materials and device structures to obtain stable devices. It is believed that the theme of this report, summarizing the knowledge of mechanisms allied with OLED degradation, would be contributory in developing better-quality OLED materials and, accordingly, longer lifespan devices.

An Approach for Measuring the Dielectric Strength of OLED Materials.

Surface roughness of electrodes plays a key role in the dielectric breakdown of thin-film organic devices. The rate of breakdown will increase when there are stochastic sharp spikes on the surface of electrodes. Additionally, surface having spiking morphology makes the determination of dielectric strength very challenging, specifically when the layer is relatively thin. We demonstrate here a new approach to investigate the dielectric strength of organic thin films for organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). The thin films were deposited on a substrate using physical vapor deposition (PVD) under high vacuum. The device architectures used were glass substrate/indium tin oxide (ITO)/organic material/aluminum (Al) and glass substrate/Al/organic material/Al. The dielectric strength of the OLED materials was evaluated from the measured breakdown voltage and layer thickness.