{"title":"Improving the air stability of flexible top-emitting organic light-emitting diodes","authors":"Mina Riahi, Kou Yoshida, Ifor D. W. Samuel","doi":"10.1038/s41528-024-00338-8","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Flexible organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) are promising light sources for biomedical applications. However, the use of these flexible devices has been restricted by their short shelf lifetimes due to poor ambient stability. Here, the fabrication of a long-lived flexible OLED is reported by replacing air-sensitive metals such as aluminum, and alkali metals used as n dopants, with silver. In addition, to achieve stable and efficient flexible OLEDs we tuned the optical cavity length to the second-order interference maximum. The device design has simple encapsulation and leads to an improvement in the air stability of flexible OLEDs which show a shelf lifetime of greater than 130 days whereas the conventional structure exhibits degradation after only 12 days. The proposed design for making flexible OLEDs demonstrates a great potential for using the devices for wearable bioelectronic applications.","PeriodicalId":48528,"journal":{"name":"npj Flexible Electronics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":12.3000,"publicationDate":"2024-08-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.nature.com/articles/s41528-024-00338-8.pdf","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"npj Flexible Electronics","FirstCategoryId":"88","ListUrlMain":"https://www.nature.com/articles/s41528-024-00338-8","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"材料科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ENGINEERING, ELECTRICAL & ELECTRONIC","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Flexible organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) are promising light sources for biomedical applications. However, the use of these flexible devices has been restricted by their short shelf lifetimes due to poor ambient stability. Here, the fabrication of a long-lived flexible OLED is reported by replacing air-sensitive metals such as aluminum, and alkali metals used as n dopants, with silver. In addition, to achieve stable and efficient flexible OLEDs we tuned the optical cavity length to the second-order interference maximum. The device design has simple encapsulation and leads to an improvement in the air stability of flexible OLEDs which show a shelf lifetime of greater than 130 days whereas the conventional structure exhibits degradation after only 12 days. The proposed design for making flexible OLEDs demonstrates a great potential for using the devices for wearable bioelectronic applications.
期刊介绍:
npj Flexible Electronics is an online-only and open access journal, which publishes high-quality papers related to flexible electronic systems, including plastic electronics and emerging materials, new device design and fabrication technologies, and applications.