Dual-color polymer light-emitting pixels processed by hybrid inkjet printing

• Published in: Applied physics letters 1998-11, Vol.73 (18), p.2561-2563
• Main Authors: Chang, Shun-Chi, Bharathan, Jayesh, Yang, Yang, Helgeson, Roger, Wudl, Fred, Ramey, Michael B., Reynolds, John R.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0003-6951; 1077-3118
• DOI: 10.1063/1.122533

A hybrid inkjet printing (HIJP) technology, which combines a pin-hole free polymer buffer layer and an inkjet printed polymer layer, allows the patterning of high quality polymer light-emitting devices. In this letter, we present a successful demonstration of controllable patterning of dual-color polymer light-emitting pixels using this HIJP technique. In this demonstration, the polymer buffer layer is a wide band gap, blue emitting semiconducting polymer prepared by the spin-casting technique. The inkjet printed layer is a red-orange semiconducting polymer which was printed onto the buffer layer. When a proper solvent was selected, the printed polymer diffused into the buffer layer and efficient energy transfer took place generating a red-orange photoluminescence and electroluminescence from the inkjet printed sites. Based on this principle, blue and orange-red dual-color polymer light-emitting pixels were fabricated on the same substrate. The use of this concept represents an entirely new technology for fabricating polymer multicolor displays with high-resolution, lateral patterning capability.