Invited Paper

OLED devices for signage applications a review of recent advances and remaining challenges
R. Sprengard1, K. Bonrad, T.K. Dubler, T. Frank, V. Hagemann, I. Khler, J. Pommerehne, C. Ottermann, F. Voges, B. Vingerling SCHOTT AG, Luminescence Technology, Hattenbergstrae 10, 55122 Mainz, Germany
ABSTRACT
Reported efficiency records of >70 lm/W and the communitys performance roadmaps indicate the potential of OLEDs (Organic Light Emitting Diodes) for use in general lighting applications. Within a shorter timeframe, OLED technology may be exploited for signage applications. Key differences of OLED signage devices to display and lighting devices are discussed. Recent results are presented on large area device design, polymer deposition technology, device and material performance, and encapsulation technology. Finally we discuss performance and cost targets for potential applications indicating the main challenges for future developments. Keywords: OLED, Organic Light Emitting Devices, lighting, signage, solid state lighting

1. INTRODUCTION
Less than twenty years have passed since the breakthrough discoveries of organic electroluminescence by TANG and VANSLYKE in 1987 [1] and by FRIEND and co-workers in 1990 [2] describing Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLED) based on small molecular weight or polymerized organic structures respectively. Since these days intense academic research and substantial commercial efforts have lead to improved understanding of materials and device structures and technology development at an astonishing pace. The initial differentiation of small molecule vs. polymer $/klm based OLEDs appears to be transforming into a $/m technological difference in coating of the organic, i.e. lm/W general market development vacuum deposition vs. solution coating. lighting ... Todays dominant branch of OLED technology is its $/cm use as an emissive display technology. Substantial reliability investments mainly in Asia - in both, small molecule processability and polymer based manufacturing lines are proving market development (device/material performance) increasing maturity in process technology and first ... success in market penetration. OLED displays will be signage Schott R&D competitive to mature LCD technology by being full color, active matrix and large size, and will develop their uniqueness features, as being thin, lightweight, displ ay conformal or even flexible, transparent in off-mode etc. A second branch of deployment is in the very early stage of development: the use of OLED as a (general) 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 lighting source. Academic and industry carry out substantial research and development, being supported time by government initiatives in the US, Asia (esp. Japan, Korea, China), and EU in the framework of solid state Fig 1: Sketch of OLED application branches over time. lighting (SSL) programs. In order to advance OLED
1

Phone ++49 / 6131 / 62766-11; Fax ++49 / 6131 / 62766-12; email: ruediger.sprengard@schott.com

OLED application branch display lighting

Organic Light-Emitting Materials and Devices VIII, edited by Zakya H. Kafafi, Paul A. Lane, Proceedings of SPIE Vol. 5519 (SPIE, Bellingham, WA, 2004) 0277-786X/04/$15 doi: 10.1117/12.567131

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to become a competitive general lighting source, two main areas of innovations are needed: performance (lm/W) and cost ($/m). In the performance area the main topics will be efficiency, lifetime, color quality and stability. Performance targets (10.000h @ 1000Cd/m; Color Rendering Index CRI > 90; efficiency > 50 lm/W) appear tough but within reach. Cost targets of <40$/m have been estimated by Optoelectronics Industry Development Association OIDA and major general lighting players [3-5]. Achieving these cost targets will require disruptive solutions for process technology and materials. The best figures of merit to measure the competitiveness of OLED lighting devices with respect to other lighting technologies will be their cost per kilolumen ($/klm) and the lifetime cost [$/Mlm/h]. First OLED lighting sources for illumination may be realized by end of this decade. In the meantime a large variety of other applications could be served by OLED. SCHOTT is developing OLED for signage applications since early 2001. This paper will review recent achievements and discuss challenges of the future. As SCHOTTs technology base is polymer or solution based OLED technology, the following discussion will focus on this branch of OLED.

2. SIGNAGE REQUIREMENTS, STATUS AND CHALLENGES

2.1. Definition of signage and discussion of technical requirements Signage - as defined here - covers a wide field of applications and could maybe best defined by its outer frontiers, i.e. displays on one side and illumination sources on the other side. We include active signage applications, i.e. the transmission of graphic information which could be adapted by turning segments on/off, but exclude high resolution displays. We include ambient and non-functional and functional illumination, but exclude general lighting. Examples of applications are automotive lighting (signaling and interior), white goods, advertising and signaling (e.g. emergency lighting), toys, special lighting (decorative, ambient). It is obvious that such a great variety of different applications will set different performance requirements to a signage OLEDs. These can however be categorized as shown in Fig 2. An important figure of merit is given by functional lifetime which is defined as the product of luminescence intensity [Cd/m] times the devices overall on-time over its product lifecycle. Typical indoor automotive applications are driven at 50-500 Cd/m for signaling and at 3501000Cd/m for ambient and functional lighting operating from 300 3000 h/year. SCHOTT signage devices based on a Covion Super Yellow PPV emitter achieve >5000h operational lifetime at 1000 Cd/m and 1 cm emission area at ambient temperature. It appears that already todays emitter lifetime at this level is sufficient for a wide spectrum of signage applications. As it comes to product shelf life, mainly determined by packaging quality, substantial challenges still have to be affronted: For most high value signage applications minimum product lifetimes are range from 3 to 10 years. Having in mind the transition of OLED packaging functional lifetime from todays organic glue cap-package to thin film intensity overall on-time encapsulation driven by cost and manufacturability [Cd/m kh] issues - a 10 year shelf life target continues to be a 10000 color spectrum major challenge for some years. Both targets, for white product/ functional and shelf lifetime, get tougher if 1000 (illumination quality) shelf life environmental stress, as temperature, humidity, UV 10 [years] any 5 100 radiation and others affects the device. Y, G, R 3 Another criterion in Fig 2. is given by the homogeneous environmental emission area, which in current device designs is limited rigid bended stress none by ITO resistivity. By applying advanced contacting bendable medium [temperature, harsh schemes with current emitter materials approximately 5 humidity, UV] flexibility 10 1 cm can be spanned for a maximum variation of emission 1 25 intensity of 25% over the device area. This target 0.1 corresponds to human eye sensitivity for non-point1000 defect type inhomogeneities. Beyond this limit the cost emission area [$/cm] voltage drop due to finite ITO resistivity becomes [cm] visible in emission intensity. With modern inline Fig 2: Key performance criteria of typical signage applications and performance status (solid line = Schott state of the art; concepts for manufacturing signage OLEDs target cost dotted line = successful technology demonstration at Schott; of about 10 ct/cm can be achieved. Material cost and dashed line = general lighting targets). depreciation of manufacturing equipment form the

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major cost blocks. Thus, achieving general lightings cost targets of 0,4 ct/cm [3-5] will require substantial innovation in both areas, process technology and materials, esp. ITO. Highlight uniqueness features of OLEDs like minimum thickness and bended or even bendable characteristics might come to commercial maturity by end of this decade and will significantly widen the applications spectrum of signage OLEDs. 2.2 Introduction to technical key problems and future challenges The technical key problems to be solved before commercialization of OLED for signage applications are partly consequences of the differences between OLED signage and display devices, partly result from the immaturity of OLED material and device performance. In section 3 recent achievement on important road blockers towards signage OLEDs will be discussed, among which o realization of large area devices by overcoming the limitation in device dimension due to ITO resistivity (section 3.1) o choice and process development of deposition technology of (polymer) solutions (section 3.2) o thin film packaging and shelf lifetime related issues (section 3.3) A second generation of signage OLEDs might possibly be based on disruptive substrate systems, i.e. ultra thin flexible glass substrates or polymer foil with barrier coating allowing to form bended or even bendable devices and should use an ITO substitute for performance (improved hybrid resistivity) and cost reasons. Further overall cost reduction will be necessary to open up broader application opportunities. Finally, by mid of the next decade, a step-by-step evolution of signage OLEDs versus General Lighting applications will take place requiring disruptive improvements in OLED performance, process technology and cost structure. A part from these innovations, continuous and significant improvement of emitter materials will be needed to allow OLED to grow to a strong and competitive technology platform for display, signage and lighting applications. Highly efficient phosphorescent organic light-emitting diodes have attracted considerable attention from the lighting industry. Devices employing phosphorescent dyes, which potentially can reach close to 100% internal quantum efficiency, allow both the singlet and the triplet states to participate in the emission process. Many publications confirm very high efficiencies for red and green emitting polymer OLEDs, with more than 30 Cd/A and 24 lm/W [6,7]. Future challenges include the development of long lifetime materials and to shift record efficiencies to typical signage or lighting luminescence intensities of 500-1000 Cd/m. It is even more difficult to generate blue light by a radiative decay of an exciton in a phosphorescent material. Unlike the situation for red and green PLEDs, the challenge to achieving (exothermic) energy transfer (from the host into the guest) in the blue lies in the lack of suitable high-energy hosts. But in general blue emission is one of the key request to meet requirements for generating white light for signage or even lighting. Many concepts have been developed to produce white light by this technology. In recent years material suppliers made big progress in synthesizing appropriate white emitting materials. In the meantime lifetime increased to 1000h at ambient brightness and efficiencies are between 5 to 8 Cd/A. White light is not a pure color but rather a combination of different emitters. For high-quality-white-light it is inalienable to have the desired CIE-value (~0,33;~0,33) and even more important a color rendering index (CRI) greater 90. Challenges for the nearer future are white emitting materials, which have a stable CIE value (at low and high voltage and low and high brightnesses, respectively) and lifetimes of 10,000 h @ >1000 cd/m. Beside the voltage dependence CIE and CRI values of white emitters change during operation, due to different lifetime values of each emitter. This effect is called differential aging and is another reason that prevents OLED products at present. Lifetime is shortening by factors like operation time and temperature, respectively. Developing materials with high efficiencies (> 30 lm/W @ 1000cd/m) is of highest priority regarding large area lighting application. Employing high efficient materials allow to operate a device at >1000cd/m without heating the device itself. Simultaneously, positive side effects will be a longer lifetime and more stable CIE and CRI values of the organic diode caused by slowing down differential aging.

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3. ACHIEVEMENTS
3.1 Large area devices beyond ITO limits One of the major R&D topics for the use of OLEDs for signage and lighting applications is to increase the lighting area of the devices. Currently, the active area is limited by the insufficient conductivity of the ITO anode. The effect of this limitation is illustrated in Fig. 4 where luminance distributions of 10x10 mm and 50x70 mm OLED devices are shown for Covion Super Yellow PPV based emitter characteristics. While small areas still have emission uniformity better than 80%, the effect is dramatically enhanced when the lighted area is increased. In this case luminance decreases from 900 Cd/m to 200 Cd/m with increasing distance from the contact pad, ruling out any application of devices this size in signage or lighting. An interesting approach to overcoming this problem has been proposed by Duggal [8]. There, several OLEDs with relatively small emission area are connected in a combination of parallel and series connection. This results in an increase of the operating voltage of the whole OLED panel, while the driving current is still low. Consequently, the emission of the individual OLEDs and thus the overall emission is homogeneous. Following this approach OLED panels of 24x24 in size have been demonstrated.

a)

b)

Fig. 3. Luminance distribution of OLED devices with an emission area of 10x10 mm (a) and 50x70 mm (b)

Another way to large area devices is to increase anode conductivity, which is possible by i) increasing the ITO layer thickness, ii) using other transparent conductive oxides, or iii) adding support line structures. As approaches i) and ii) might result in negative side effects, i. e. higher surface roughness or lower transmission, method iii) was used in this study to increase the active device area. Different materials and layouts were used for the support line structures, with

(a)

(b)

(c)

Fig. 4. Photograph of the emission uniformity of 150x150 mm devices at an operating current of 50 mA with only an ITO anode (a), support lines at the edges (b) and an optimized support line structure (c)

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a)

b)

c)
Fig. 5. Spacial luminance distribution at 100 mA for 150x150 mm devices with only an ITO anode (a), support lines at the edges (b) and an optimized support line structure (c)

main focus on the increase in conductivity, low perturbation of the coating process, and minimal effects on the optical appearance of the device. Fig 4. illustrates the significant improvement in emission uniformity of 150x150 mm devices. While OLEDs with a conventional ITO anode show a drastic voltage drop and therefore emit light only in a narrow region close to the contact (a), addition of support lines at the edge of the active area significantly improve current distribution and result in light emission over the entire active area (b). However, emission uniformity is still poor with this structure. Optimizing the support lines for uniform current distribution over the entire substrate leads to homogeneous 150x150 mm device. A more quantitative analysis is given in Fig. 5, where the spatial luminance distribution for the three types of devices is shown. The luminance drop from the contact pad or device edges is clearly visible for OLEDs of type (a) or (b), whereas a relatively homogeneous emission is achieved for type (c). Note, the pronounced emission peak in the center of devices (b) and (c) is due to changes in the setup of the spincoater used for coating and can therefore be regarded as a process artifact. It is not an emission characteristic of devices with support line structures. As mentioned earlier a main issue for optimizing the support line structure was to achieve minimal perturbation of the coating process. In order to study the effect on formation of the hole-injection and of the emitter layer, we have carried out spatially resolved Raman spectroscopy on devices with an optimized support line structure. Raman spectroscopy is especially suited for these investigations as it allows measuring through the glass substrate, i. e. it can be applied to the final devices. Furthermore, it is possible to separate the different functional layers in an OLED by sequentially exciting characteristic signals of the polymers, e.g. the 745 nm excitation of PEDOT, which is used as hole-injection material in our devices. Analysis of the Raman signals yields the layer thickness of the different polymers. In order to conclude on the spatial distribution of the layer thickness, Raman spectra are taken at different points of the sample and combined to a contour plot of the layer thickness. Typical scan areas for this kind of experiments are 0,5x0,5 mm, with data taken in 25 m steps. The results of the Raman spectroscopy are compiled in Fig. 6. It is apparent that PEDOT forms a bowllike thickness profile between the support line structure, whereas the emitter layer is relatively homogeneous with only a minor increase towards the center of the scan area. Taking the fundamentally different solvents water and toluene for the two polymers into account, this effect can be explained by different wetting properties of the

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solutions. Performing these types of experiments on different positions on a 150x150 mm device yields no significant difference in the thickness profiles of the two layers. In all cases PEDOT thickness is approximately 2 3 times higher at the edges of the scan area, i. e. in regions with direct contact to the support line structure, than in its center. This results in a larger overall thickness of the organic layers close to the support lines. Keeping in mind that the voltage applied to the device is constant over the entire device area, this thickness variation causes local variations of the electric field. As luminance is voltage driven, this effect could result in microscopic luminance variations even though the macroscopic emission of the devices is uniform. This effect could indeed be observed by emission microscopy studies carried out on the devices. Close to the support line structures luminance was lower than in the center, as the local device thickness is lower and thus the driving electric field is higher in these areas. In conclusion we demonstrated that addition of support lines to the anode is essential for obtaining large area devices with homogeneous emission. By optimizing the structure we were able to fabricate 150x150 mm devices with minimal variation in the macroscopic emission. Performing microscopy studies of the layer formation within the support line structure yields thickness variations of the PEDOT layer, whereas the emitter forms a uniform layer. These topographic variations result in microscopic luminance variations, as studied with emission microscopy.

Fig 6. Distribution of the PEDOT (left) und emitter (right) layer thickness as measured with 2D-Raman spectroscopy. The measurements were carried out on a representative position of a 150x150 mm device with optimized support line structure.

3.2 Printing The requirements for production of OLEDs for lighting or signage application in comparison to display applications are different. The main focus for display design is high resolution with very small pitch sizes, whereas for illumination the focus is on large area film formation and low cost processing. The main research activities are focusing on displays, therefore the production processes as for example ink jet printing were optimized for printing small pixels usually into bank structures built by photo lithography. In order to minimize the production costs it is important to develop processes with highest material utilization and high throughput. In table 1 different polymer coating processes are shown and assessed with respect to criteria like throughput, material use, homogeneity and substrate size. Spin coating is a very popular method in research, but especially material use is very poor and also substrate size is limited. Dip coating is well known for its film homogeneity as used for example in interference filters, but has a low throughput. The material efficiency is not very high, due to the fact that both sides of the substrate are coated and that an additional cleaning process is needed for removing the polymer from the backside and edges of the substrate. Any coating process without possibility of structuring the deposition area suffers from the fact, that at least at the edges of the substrates the polymer must be removed. The removal of the polymer must be done very carefully and precise to have small border zones and to prepare a good encapsulation. The removal of the organic layer can be done wet chemically, but the permeation of solvent into the sensitive areas must be prevented. Better suited are abrasive methods, like laser ablation or plasma removal. Again care must be taken that avoid contamination or redeposition. All known ablation processes are complex and costly and slow. Therefore printing techniques are more favorable, as the organic does not need to be removed afterwards.

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Throughput Material efficiency Homogeneity Structuring Resolution Size

Spin coating + -+ --

Dip coating O + -++

Spraying + o o -++

Slot coating + + + -+

Curtain coating ++ o + -+

Evaporation small molec. o o ++ o + -

Table 1: Assessment of different unstructured coating technologies with respect to evaporation processes of small molecules.

In principle all printing techniques are applicable, but especially for OLEDs the requirements for film homogeneity is extremely high. In addition the printing equipment and consumables must be inert concerning aromatic solvents and must not bloat. Thus our discussion limits to printing techniques listed in Tab. 2. A very common printing method is screen printing with high throughput and large substrate sizes. On the other hand the thickness of the wet films have to be high, so that the polymer solution must be very dilute. Therefore the solution tends to creep beneath the screens, which causes poor printing results. If more than one layer is printed the screen is in contact to the sensitive polymer layer underneath, which might damage the layer. This is a problem for all contact printing methods, especially if contamination with particles cannot be excluded. Finally the resolution of screen printing is limited. Another possibility is given by flexo printing, which is very similar to screen printing. Flexo printing is using a microstructured roll, which is filled with the polymer solution. This allows wet film thickness, which are thinner than in the screen printing case and allows the use of denser solutions. Again the stability of the roll and the equipment against aromatic solvents must be ensured. This can be overcome by gravure printing where the roll is not made out of a flexible material, but is made out of steel. As a disadvantage, gravure printing requires extreme flatness and planarity of substrate and the roll respectively. Both processes are sensitive to particle contamination, because clogged screens or rolls can easily produce repeatable defects in a production line. Ink jet printing is already well known in the OLED display industry. Usually the droplets are printed into small structured vats. Surface tension and wettability of the substrate and the border of the cavity are important. For signage or lighting applications the additional vat structures, which are normally produced by photolithography are too expensive. Therefore any inkjet process has to be adapted to large area coating with good homogeneity. Inkjet is very material efficient and is a non-contact printing process. Main drawback is the low printing speed, which might be overcome by the use of parallel printing heads. Another disadvantage is the possible clocking of the nozzles. The last deposition technique discussed here should be thermal evaporation of small molecules, which has an excellent homogeneity and allows the fabrication of efficient multi layer systems. Main drawback is the use of vacuum equipment with its high requirements on maintenance. By the use of linear sources or shower head sources the material efficiency has been improved. Still not solved is the problem of cleaning the shadow masks, which are heavily coated during a production process. Evaporation O O + O + Ink jet o ++ o ++ + 100 dpi + + Screen printing ++ + o + o ++ + Flexo printing ++ + ++ ++ + + +

Throughput Material efficency Homogeneity Structureability Resolution Size Maintanance

Tab. 2. Comparison of different structured wet coating techniques to thermal evaporation of small molecules.

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3.4 Encapsulation technologies and characterization methods One of todays major challenges in OLED development is the encapsulation technique. Finding a cost effective and reliable solution will strongly influences the market position of organic solid state lighting. Because of the highest demands on the sealing against moisture and oxygen the currently available encapsulation methods must be improved. Beside other techniques thin film encapsulation seems to be capable to fulfill both contradictory requirements with substantial investments in R&D and process development needed over the next years. One of the important topics in OLED research is defining the right measurement categories. To detect minimal oxygen and water contamination demands the highest testing equipment standards. The sealing of OLEDs for signing applications must resist tough standards. Operational life time demands like 10000h, 10y shelf life time and typical temperature requirements between -40C and +90C.
a) UV Radiation Mask UV-Adhesive Substrate Lid Desiccant OLED-Layers c) Thin Film Encapsulation OLED-Layers b) EpoxyAdhesive OLED-Layers

Fig. 7. Todays three major types of encapsulation methods. a) Most common perimeter sealing uses an engrossed lid out of metal or glass with inside mounted desiccant. b) The full coverage sealing needs an unmachined glass lid and a specially developed adhesive in between. c) The present approaches of thin films stacks consist in a multi layer system alternating polymer and inorganic layers covered by a scratch protection.

The most commonly used encapsulation technique is the perimeter sealing (Fig. 7a). with a concept spun-off from LCD industry. Shelf life time specifications are of 3 year in the lower range an go up to 5-10 years. Having developed OLED compatible adhesives in the last few years, full coverage sealing (Fig. 7b) could be used for short time products. Beside the expensive adhesive the present shelf life time of this technique is limited to 1-2 years cause of visible black spot growth. The thin film (tf) encapsulation (Fig. 7c) is the most promising sealing method for the future. The large area sealing process leads to significant advantages of device encapsulation costs for large volume production. The detailed shelf life time and uniformity maps are not revealed by the different suppliers. Manufacturability and process reliability continues to be a major challenge. The method specific aspects of thin film encapsulation will be discussed in detail. 3.4.1 Technology status of thin film (tf) encapsulation Tf-technologies promise the smallest possible thickness form factor (< 0.5mm) and have high potential for encapsulation of flexible OLEDs. Effective moisture and oxygen barrier coatings need several m thickness including a scratch resistant layer on top. Typical issues are surface roughness and defect density. The chemical and physical influences of ITO spikes, Hole Transport Layer HTL and Light Emitting Polymer LEP layers must be taken into account. Further on, stress (intrinsic stresses and mismatch in coefficient in thermal expansion CTE) between inorganic layers (cathode-stack) and polymer stack can lead to interface failures resulting in black spots. Depending on device operation or environmental conditions, elevated packaging temperatures are likely to occur. Therefore, encapsulation materials with high glass transition temperature Tg may be advantageous on the long term, showing less permeability and ageing issues. Flexible OLEDs cannot be encapsulated with rigid metal or glass lids, but need ultra thin glass or better thin film encapsulation solutions instead. 3.4.2 Thin film barrier functionality Barrier performance is the main tf-encapsulation to be investigated. Many materials have been tested. Dense and defectfree layers are important. Though thick polymers may be highly permeable, very thin < 5 nm polymer layers allow very low permeability figures. The probably most widely known technology Barix from Vitex, is promising excellent

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barrier performance for flexible devices [9]. TF-OLEDs for display applications typically need a 1st planarizing layer on structured device in order to offer a smooth and featureless condensation interface for the 1st inorganic encapsulation layer. By adding a non-conformal 2nd layer (polymer) and a 2nd inorganic layer the Barrier Improvement Factor (BIF) can be vastly enhanced. Additional layer pairs lead to the required barrier functionality. Barrier functionality for O2 can be reached by inorganic layers with increased permeation path lengths through randomly distributed defects, and nonconformal interfaces etc. Barrier functionality for H2O is less well understood, and more problematic than for O2. A similar approach of using alternating stacks of inorganic/ceramic and organic materials is followed by Otb, Netherlands. While Vitex uses sputtering deposition, otb is using PEVCD [10]. GE recently proposed a multi-layer stack design using SiO2/Si3N4 with intermediate getter layers [11]. Common approaches use binary systems with ceramic like morphology and the intrinsic disadvantage of pin-hole formation and grain boundary diffusion paths. Alternatively SCHOTT is following an approach based on the excellent hermetic properties of amorphous materials, i.e. glass which due to its disordered atomic structure will not form pinholes or grain-boundaries. By depositing thin glass layers SCHOTT is confident to meet the challenging OLED requirements. PVD-glass deposition methods can be optimized for planarization and dense low defect barrier layers. High deposition rates can be achieved in combination with potentially simple layer design. 3.4.3 Testing equipment and measurement categories Quantitative Water Vapor Transmission Rate (WVTR), Oxygen Transmission Rate (OTR) measurements and accelerating shelf life aging test (AST) can be used for process development. The Ca-Spot Test (CST) of Philips is based on monitoring a degrading Ca layer of calibrated thickness, embedded in the encapsulation system under test [12]. The amount of O2 and H2O needed can be estimated from calibrating transmissivity before / during and after full degradation of the Ca-Spot, resulting in WVTR [g/m2/day] and an OTR [cm3/m2/day] figures. The results are a measure for the encapsulation on that very Ca-Spot-Structure under test, but not necessarily conclusive for real OLEDs. OSRAM patented a Ca-Spot test based on a 4-point resistance measurement, which can be applied to real OLEDs as well [13]. Intel choose to monitor stress phenomena in encapsulated OLED structures immersed into a test environment. Invariability of Stress to environmental factors reveals superior barrier performance [14]. AST & Ca-spot testing methods Especially Ca-Spot-Test (CST) results must be interpreted very carefully. They may not be representative for OLEDs and may suggest better performance figures then achievable on real OLEDs. The Accelerated shelf life time test (AST) set up is taking OLED reality into account. The CST characterizes the performance of the OLED encapsulation in terms of WVTR (Water Vapor Transmission Rate). It measures the thickness degradation dca / t of an encapsulated Ca-Spot (see fig. 8) and is well described in literature [15]. The CST method is sensitive to measure required WVTRs that are as low as 10-6 g/(m day). If lifetime of 10 years is expected, the rate of water vapor transmission must be less than 10-6 g/(mday) at room temperature [15]. Beyond the measurement of the WVTR by the CST one can determine the amount of (effective) water that is set free from the adhesive, the diffusion coefficient D, the permeability coefficient P (for special geometries [16]) and the solubility coefficient k. An imaging processing software calculates the optical density of the Ca spot and the Ca film thickness. A typical CST result is shown in fig. 9, red line. Basic is the following stoichiometric relation for the Ca reaction with moisture: Ca + 2H2O Ca(OH)2 +H2. Metallic Ca is opaque while Ca(OH)2 has a high transparency. For an edge seal encapsulation the WVTREG is calculated as
WVTRES = FCS g nd 1,41 3 ca FES cm nt

(eq. 1)

with FCS the area of the Ca-Spot and FES, the footprint of the encapsulated volume. For a thin film encapsulation the WVTRTF is calculated as follows: 2 H O d g d (eq, 2) WVTRTF = Ca ca = 1,41 3 ca Ca t cm t
2

The degradation process changes completely for full coverage sealing. WVTR must be derived from area shrinkage and is presented in [16]

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CCD

Glas
B

Glas
A

Epoxy
Backlight

Ca(OH)2 , CaO, .. Epoxy Ca Glas

Epoxy Epoxy
C

Ca(OH)2 , CaO, .. Ca Glas

Epoxy

Fig. 8. Measurement of Ca spots: A CCD camera is taking images of encapsulated Ca spots laying on a shining backlight/flat lamp. The system determines the optical density of the Ca spot and is applicable for both perimeter sealed OLEDS or the full coverage sealing.

The AST characterizes the performance of the encapsulated OLED in terms of black spot density, black spot size and light emitting area in time series. The degradation of large area OLEDs is detected via a CCD camera (eg. 1024x1024 pixels). A standard image processing software is used to work on the images. Non-emitting defects, i.e. black spots can be identified easily by their low intensity. The software determines up all non-emitting areas, calculates their size and sums up all sizes to a total defect size, a subroutine calculates the total cathode contact size, both in time series. The Schott system can actually detect non-emitting defects with a diameter of 70 m on a 50 x 50 mm OLED. Degradation of OLEDs can be monitored easily by storing the devices under controlled conditions (85C, 85% RH). The blue line in fig. 9 shows a typical example of an AST test result. Fig. 9 shows a typical encapsulation performance test result, by comparing CST and AST. For a period TAST the performance is hardly altered. For t > TAST the black spot density and spot size increase steadily with time. If measured at room temperature TAST defines the OLED shelf life time. If measured at higher temperature and/or humidities TAST defines the accelerated shelf life time.

1200

70

number of black spots (AST)

1000

800

60

600 55 400

85C/85%RH
50

200 45 0 0 5 10

tAST = 12 d
15 20 25 40 30

time [a.u.]

Fig. 9: CST and AST measurement for a perimeter seal. The Ca-Spot and the OLED were stored at 85C / 85% RH.

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Ca-thickness (CST) [nm]

dCa = 14 nm mH 0 = 7.9 g

65

To link the AST and the CST data, it is reasonable to determine the decrease in Ca-Spot thickness d (CST), that corresponds to the AST lifetime. It is a measure of the amount of water vapor, that causes the onset of black spot growth. An amount of 7,9 g of water vapor is calculated from fig 3.3. Here, the red line is taken from a CST measurement of a Ca-spot that is encapsulated and stored in the same way as the OLED for the AST (footprint 13,7 cm). It is noteworthy, that this value is rather independent of the storage conditions. This indicates, that the OLED can tolerate water vapor up to a threshold level of 5,8 mg/m.

4. CONCLUSIONS
Enthusiastic expectations of electronic and optical applications of OLEDs have stimulated dynamic academic and industrial activities in the past decade. OLEDs for display applications are commercially taking-off. Lighting applications are seen on the horizon. OLEDs for signage applications will find first applications in the next years. Solving key challenges like large area device realization, polymer deposition technology, cost effective, high performance encapsulation technology and low cost manufacturing concepts, OLED will find a broad applications base. Continuous improvement of (emitter) material performance will be the basis for the future success.

ACKNOLEDGEMENTS
The authors are indebted to A. Wienss and S. Hartmann, E&TS Deutschland GmbH, for valuable contributions on Raman spectroscopy. This work was partially supported by German Government BMBF grant 13N8212.

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