Thin-Film Encapsulation of Organic Light-Emitting Devices

This project seeks to extend the lifetime of organic light-emitting devices (OLEDs) by blocking the transmission of ambient oxygen and moisture into the delicate emissive region of the device. Our approach is to encapsulate the organic device with hybrid thin-film stacks of both organic and inorganic materials. It is projected that, for commercial applications, such an encapsulation scheme will need to reduce the water vapor transmission to 1 x10 -6 g/m 2 -day and the oxygen transmission to 1 x10 -5 cm 3 (STP)/m 2 -day. We have developed a low-temperature (100oC) PECVD (ltPECVD) process for both amorphous silicon nitride and amorphous silicon oxide layers which yield optically transparent layers (>85% transmission) with low stress (-1.6 x10 9