Organic LEDs
OLEDs (Organic Light Emitting Diodes) are miniature, flexible, versatile and highly efficient light sources that consume little energy. OLED sources can be extremely small, as in the case of the pixels in a display screen, but can also be distributed over an entire surface, such as the walls of a room or components of a motor car interior.
While OLED technology exhibits all the properties needed to compete commercially with current technologies based on incandescence and fluorescence, some technical obstacles remain to be overcome.
While OLED technology exhibits all the properties needed to compete commercially with current technologies based on incandescence and fluorescence, some technical obstacles remain to be overcome.
The problem of surface defects, which curtail the working life of such devices, is particularly important.
Elettra's contribution
Elettra used a synchrotron beamline as an X-ray source and a Scanning Photoemission Microscope (SPEM) to examine the form, chemical composition, and evolution over time, of the microscopic defects that form on the surface of an OLED in various environmental conditions.
This approach has led to the identification of the parameters that can cause such defects to occur, such as exposure to humidity, the quality of materials used in their production, and the methods used to process them.
The SPEM technique provides the scientific and industrial community with a new and powerful investigation tool, since it enables mapping of the topography and chemical composition of specimen surfaces to be performed at nanometric levels of detail.
Elettra used a synchrotron beamline as an X-ray source and a Scanning Photoemission Microscope (SPEM) to examine the form, chemical composition, and evolution over time, of the microscopic defects that form on the surface of an OLED in various environmental conditions.
This approach has led to the identification of the parameters that can cause such defects to occur, such as exposure to humidity, the quality of materials used in their production, and the methods used to process them.
The SPEM technique provides the scientific and industrial community with a new and powerful investigation tool, since it enables mapping of the topography and chemical composition of specimen surfaces to be performed at nanometric levels of detail.
Facility: ESCA Microscopy Beamline.
Bibliography: Mechanism of dark-spot degradation of organic light-emitting devices; P. Melpignano, A. Baron-Toaldo, V. Biondo, S. Priante, R. Zamboni, M. Murgia, S. Caria, L. Gregoratti, A. Barinov, M. Kiskinova; Applied Physics Letters 86 (4), art. no. 041105, 2005.
Last Updated on Tuesday, 04 July 2023 10:16
