High-performance thin-film encapsulation for organic light-emitting diodes

Organic light-emitting diodes degrade rapidly by means of local cathode oxidation when exposed to the ambient atmosphere, resulting in visible non-emissive areas called black spots. High performance inorganic based encapsulations are required to protect the OLED. We have applied a hybrid thin-film encapsulation stack consisting of two inorganic barrier layers of silicon nitride deposited at low temperature with an organic layer in between. The resulting water permeation mechanism into the OLED is solely by means of lateral pinhole-to-pinhole transport. With the application of CaO nanoparticles in the organic layer the lateral water transport rate is reduced and we show that black spot formation in 8 cm(2) OLEDs is delayed by 6000 h at accelerated climate conditions of 60 degrees C/90% relative humidity. This is estimated to correspond to 20 years at ambient conditions. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V.