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Spontaneously Embedded Scattering Structures in a Flexible Substrate for Light Extraction
Author(s) -
Gim Seungo,
Lee Illhwan,
Park Jae Yong,
Lee JongLam
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
small
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.785
H-Index - 236
eISSN - 1613-6829
pISSN - 1613-6810
DOI - 10.1002/smll.201604168
Subject(s) - chemical mechanical planarization , materials science , substrate (aquarium) , layer (electronics) , optoelectronics , coating , surface roughness , transmittance , oled , haze , plasma , composite material , chemistry , oceanography , physics , organic chemistry , quantum mechanics , geology
A flexible hazy substrate (FHS) with embedded air bubbles to increase light extraction efficiency of organic light‐emitting diodes (OLEDs) is reported. In order to embed the air bubbles in the flexible substrate, micropatterned substrates are fabricated by plasma treatment, and then coated with a planarization layer. During the planarization layer coating, air bubbles are trapped between the substrate and the planarization layer. The haze of the FHS can be controlled from 1.7% to 68.4% by changing the size of micropatterns by adjusting the plasma treatment time. The FHS shows average haze of 68.4%, average total transmittance of 90.3%, and extremely flat surface with average roughness ( R a ) of 1.2 nm. Rigorous coupled‐wave analysis and finite‐difference time‐domain simulations are conducted to demonstrate that the air bubbles in the substrate can effectively extract photons that are trapped in the substrate. The FHS increases the power efficiency of OLEDs by 22% and further increases by 91% combined with an external extraction layer. Moreover, the FHS has excellent mechanical flexibility. No defect has been observed after 10 000 bending cycles at bending radius of 4 mm.