A guide to qualitative haze measurements demonstrated on inkjet-printed silver electrodes for flexible OLEDs

The search for alternative transparent electrodes to the commonly used indium tin oxide (ITO) in optoelectronic devices has led to solution-based approaches based on inkjet printing. As an additive manufacturing technique that allows drops to be positioned only where necessary, inkjet printing shows reduced waste of starting material compared to other methods such as spin coating. As a result, functional materials can be both coated and structured without the need for masks or lithographic pre-patterning of the substrate. For this contribution, we utilized a particle-free silver ink to produce a transparent electrode by inkjet printing. After printing, the silver ions were reduced to metallic silver by an argon plasma. The process takes place at low temperatures (ca. 40 – 50°C), making it suitable for use with flexible substrates, which are often temperature-sensitive. The printed silver layers show good electrical conductivity and optical transmittance, with a crystalline grain structure being formed and maintained during the metallization process. This structure forms a self-organized nanometer-size grid, whose structure allows light to pass through. Due to its nano-structured property, the haze of the electrode was investigated using a simple experimental setup based on a light source shining through the electrode and analyzing the size of the projected pattern. Such qualitative assessment can be a useful indication of the quality of the electrode and we provide details on how to replicate this setup. The final electrodes were implemented in solution-processed OLEDs, which showed bright luminance and overall low haze compared to ITO-based reference devices.