ABSTRACT
Pretreatment of the indium tin oxide (ITO) surface is generally adopted to improve the charge injection and device performance in the fabrication of organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). For the common approaches of surface treatment, such as oxygen plasma treatment, self-assembled monolayer (SAM) adsorption, and the PEDOT:PSS coating, different effects on the device lifetime were observed. A distinctly different driving voltage change with device operation time was obtained and was correlated with the device lifetime. The fast increase in driving voltage for devices based on oxygen-plasma-treated ITO is attributed to the work function change as a result of the change in the composition of the interface with device operation, whereas a rather stable work function for SAM-modified ITO is suggested due to the permanent dipoles associated with the monolayer and the protecting effect of the covalently bound monolayer on the surface composition.
