Flexible Phosphorescent oLED Lighting Devices Encapsulated with a novel Thin Film barrier

摘要

Phosphorescent OLEDs (PHOLEDs) provide an attractive platform for making large area, energy efficient, diffuse solid state light sources. They also offer exciting new form factors enabling thin, light and transparent lighting. Furthermore, PHOLEDs can be deposited directly on flexible substrates to prepare flexible lighting devices. Two critical enabling technologies for flexible OLED lighting are energy efficient PHOLED devices and flexible, transparent thin film encapsulation. Using phosphorescent emitters, high efficiency, low operating temperature, and high color rendering index lighting devices can be made which are comparable to the best available lighting technologies. OLEDs are sensitive to water and oxygen, so low permeability seals must be provided to ensure long shelf-lifetimes. We have developed an ultra-low permeation barrier film deposited by a simple process using a single chamber. OLEDs encapsulated with this barrier have retained 100% active area for more than 500 hrs at accelerated testing of 85°C and 85% relative humidity. In this article, we describe the flexible lighting technology made possible by combining our high efficiency phosphorescent OLEDs and ultra-low permeability single layer barrier.