Light management in flexible OLEDs

Stephan Harkema; Raghu K. Pendyala; Christian G. C. Geurts; Paul L. J. Helgers; Jack W. Levell; Joanne S. Wilson; Duncan MacKerron

doi:10.1117/12.2061777

8 October 2014 Light management in flexible OLEDs

Stephan Harkema, Raghu K. Pendyala, Christian G. C. Geurts, Paul L. J. Helgers, Jack W. Levell, Joanne S. Wilson, Duncan MacKerron

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 9183, Organic Light Emitting Materials and Devices XVIII; 91831H (2014) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2061777
Event: SPIE Organic Photonics + Electronics, 2014, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

Organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) are a promising lighting technology. In particular OLEDs fabricated on plastic foils are believed to hold the future. These planar devices are subject to various optical losses, which requires sophisticated light management solutions. Flexible OLEDs on plastic substrates are as prone to losses related to wave guiding as devices on glass. However, we determined that OLEDs on plastic substrates are susceptible to another loss mode due to wave guiding in the thin film barrier. With modeling of white polymer OLEDs fabricated on PEN substrates, we demonstrate that this loss mode is particularly sensitive to polarized light emission. Furthermore, we investigated how thin film barrier approaches can be combined with high index light extraction layers. Our analysis shows that OLEDs with a thin film barrier consisting of an inorganic/organic/inorganic layer sequence, a low index inorganic negatively affects the OLED efficiency. We conclude that high index inorganics are more suitable for usage in high efficiency flexible OLEDs.

Citation Download Citation

Stephan Harkema, Raghu K. Pendyala, Christian G. C. Geurts, Paul L. J. Helgers, Jack W. Levell, Joanne S. Wilson, and Duncan MacKerron "Light management in flexible OLEDs", Proc. SPIE 9183, Organic Light Emitting Materials and Devices XVIII, 91831H (8 October 2014); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2061777

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