Indium tin oxide thin films grown on flexible plastic substrates by pulsed-laser deposition for organic light-emitting diodes

Transparent conducting indium tin oxide (ITO) thin films were grown by pulsed laser deposition (PLD) on flexible polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrates. The structural, electrical, and optical properties of these films were investigated as a function of substrate deposition temperature and background gas pressure. ITO films (200 nm thick), deposited by PLD on PET at 25 °C and 45 mTorr of oxygen, exhibit high optical transparency (∼87%) in the visible (400–700 nm) with a low electrical resistivity of 7×10−4 Ω cm. ITO films grown by PLD on PET were used as the anode contact in organic light-emitting devices. A luminous power efficiency of ∼1.6 lm/W was achieved at 100 cd/m2, slightly higher than that (∼1.5 lm/W) measured for the control device based on a sputter-deposited ITO on glass.

[1]  Jin Ma,et al.  Preparation and properties of indium tin oxide films deposited on polyester substrates by reactive evaporation , 1997 .

[2]  Kirk H. Schulz,et al.  Electrical, optical, and structural properties of indium-tin-oxide thin films deposited on polyethylene terephthalate substrates by rf sputtering , 1998 .

[3]  Göran Gustafsson,et al.  The “plastic” led: A flexible light-emitting device using a polyaniline transparent electrode , 1993 .

[4]  Alberto Piqué,et al.  Electrical, optical, and structural properties of indium–tin–oxide thin films for organic light-emitting devices , 1999 .

[5]  Alberto Piqué,et al.  Electrical and optical properties of indium tin oxide thin films grown by pulsed laser deposition , 1999 .

[6]  A. Galeckas,et al.  Optical characterization of excess carrier lifetime and surface recombination in 4H/6H–SiC , 2001 .

[7]  H. Hartnagel,et al.  Semiconducting Transparent Thin Films , 1995 .

[8]  T. Minami,et al.  Physics of very thin ITO conducting films with high transparency prepared by DC magnetron sputtering , 1995 .

[9]  Shigemitsu Shin,et al.  Oxygen stoichiometry in the system (CaxSr1−x)FeO3−y. Its effect on crystallographic and thermodynamic properties , 1981 .

[10]  Alberto Piqué,et al.  Indium tin oxide thin films for organic light-emitting devices , 1999 .

[11]  Size distribution of a metallic polydispersion through capacitive measurements in a sedimentation experiment , 2001 .

[12]  Jerzy Kanicki,et al.  High-efficiency organic polymer light-emitting heterostructure devices on flexible plastic substrates , 2000 .

[13]  Hiroshi Inada,et al.  Plastic Multilayered Molecular Organic Light Emitting Diodes , 1997 .

[14]  Charles D. Merritt,et al.  Emission mechanism in rubrene-doped molecular organic light-emitting diodes: direct carrier recombination at luminescent centers , 1998 .

[15]  M. J. Edwards,et al.  Thin-film-transistor- and diode-addressed AMLCDs on polymer substrates , 1997 .

[16]  S R Forrest,et al.  Vacuum-deposited, nonpolymeric flexible organic light-emitting devices. , 1997, Optics letters.

[17]  Keikichi G. Nakamura,et al.  Quantitative structure analyses of YBa 2 Cu 3 O 7-δ thin films: Determination of oxygen content from x-ray-diffraction patterns , 1993 .

[18]  Charles D. Merritt,et al.  Dye-doped molecular light-emitting diodes with enhanced performance , 1998, Optics & Photonics.

[19]  R. Maboudian,et al.  Micromechanical properties of silicon-carbide thin films deposited using single-source chemical-vapor deposition , 2001 .

[20]  G. Hubler,et al.  Pulsed Laser Deposition of Thin Films , 2003, Handbook of Laser Technology and Applications.

[21]  B. Chiou,et al.  Mechanical properties of r.f. magnetron sputtered indium tin oxide films , 1997 .