Overview
ABSTRACT
One of the major problems with organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) and microbatteries lies in their rapid degradation when in contact with oxidising gases in the atmosphere, water and oxygen. Efficient encapsulation processes are therefore needed to achieve sufficient reliability and lifetime. To overcome these problems, new encapsulation processes have been developed to achieve reliable, low-cost, flexible, conformable and less brittle products. The atomic layer deposition (ALD) technology is one of the most promising ways to achieve high quality barrier layers to protect these devices.
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Read the articleAUTHORS
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Tony MAINDRON: CEA-LETI researcher - MINATEC Campus-Univ. Grenoble Alpes, 17 rue des Martyrs, Grenoble, France.
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Messaoud BEDJAOUI: CEA-LETI researcher - MINATEC Campus-Univ. Grenoble Alpes, 17 rue des Martyrs, Grenoble, France.
INTRODUCTION
Thin-film circuits have a wide range of applications today, in all areas of microelectronics: OLEDs (Organic Light Emitting Diodes) for display and lighting, OPVs (Organic PhotoVoltaics) for solar energy recovery, OPDs (Organic PhotoDiodes) for photodetection, OTFTs (Organic Thin Film Transistors) for electronics, and microbatteries for energy storage. Whatever the targeted device, based on the integration of organic or inorganic semiconductors, one of the major problems lies in the high sensitivity of the components to the breathable atmosphere, particularly to oxygen and water vapour.
The encapsulation of commercial products is achieved using glass covers hermetically sealed under inert gas around the devices by means of laser glass sintering. However, this solution has a number of shortcomings, such as cost, process logic and loss of flexibility. Technologies employing gas-barrier thin films have therefore been developed to replace rigid covers. ALD technology is one of the technologies enabling very high barrier levels to be achieved, characterized by very low WVTR (Water Vapour Transmission Rates). This article describes the application of ALD technology to the encapsulation of OLED devices, followed by microbatteries. The specific features of each electronic device will be discussed.
A table of acronyms is provided at the end of the article.
Field: Display technologies and power generation
Degree of technology diffusion: Growth
Technologies involved: OLED, Microbatteries, Thin films, ALD
Applications: Display, Lighting, Energy
Main French players :
Competitive clusters: Minalogic
Competence centers: CEA-LETI
Manufacturers: MicroOLED, Astron-Fiamm Safety, ST MicroElectronics
Other players worldwide :
Samsung, LG, Merck, Panasonic, Novaled, Sumitomo, Universal Display Corporation, Osram, Konica Minolta, Sony
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KEYWORDS
lithium microbatteries | ultra-high barrier | atomic layer deposition
This article is included in
Optics and photonics
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Encapsulation of organic light-emitting diodes and microbatteries by ALD
ALD technology for encapsulation
Bibliography
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