Ag nanowire electrode with patterned dry film photoresist insulator for flexible organic light-emitting diode with various designs

• Published in: Materials & design 2018-12, Vol.160, p.572-577
• Main Authors: Kim, Sunho, Hwang, Byungil
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Dry film photoresist; Electrode; Insulator; Organic light-emitting diode; Silver nanowire
• ISSN: 0264-1275; 1873-4197
• DOI: 10.1016/j.matdes.2018.09.051

In this study, the utilization of a dry film photoresist (DFR) was explored for fabricating a patterned insulating layer in Ag nanowire (AgNW) bottom electrodes with various designs for flexible organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). With a single hot-pressing step, a pre-patterned DFR insulator was attached onto the AgNW electrodes, thus forming insulated electrodes in desired patterns. In the same hot-pressing step, AgNWs were also embedded into poly(methyl methacrylate), which sufficiently reduced the root mean square (RMS) roughness (~5 nm) for use in OLED lighting. Using DFR, AgNW electrodes with various shapes were fabricated to realize shaped flexible OLED lighting. The performance of OLED lighting employing the AgNW/patterned-DFR insulator electrode was comparable to that of indium‑tin-oxide-based OLED lighting. Further, the DFR insulator was utilized as a planarization layer in a paper-based OLED lighting, which operated well with a turn-on voltage of 3.5 V and maximum luminance of 157 cd/m2 at 7.5 V. [Display omitted] •Ag nanowire flexible transparent electrodes with root mean square below 5 nm were fabricated by a single hot pressing process•By using pre-patterned dry film photoresist, shaped Ag nanowire electrodes were fabricated in the same hot pressing process•Flexible organic light-emitting diode lightings with various designs were realized with the fabricated electrodes•Paper-based organic light-emitting diode lighting was realized using a dry film photoresist planarization layer