Wendell Smith
Research Mentor(s): Robert Cawthorn
Department or Program: EECS
Authors: Wendell Smith, Noel Giebink, Robert Cawthorn
Session: Session 1: 12:00pm-12:50pm
Poster: 47
Abstract
OLED screens compared to their LED counterparts have experienced a lot of improvements as of late, most known for their lower power consumption and improved quality of picture because OLED screens can display “true Blacks”. Their ability to create their own light without any additional hardware behind them helps engineers create increasingly thinner devices. Implementation of this technology can be seen in phones, TVs, tablets, etc. While the technology is an improvement, there is still a significant opportunity to improve OLED efficiency in comparison to their LED counterparts. Currently, too much of the light produced by the OLED is trapped inside the device and ultimately converted into heat. For more efficient OLEDs the light outcoupling process needs to be improved. To do so a specially-designed Top Emitting OLED being designed by Robert Cawthorn (a Graduate student and my Mentor), to guide light out of the OLED layer stack and direct it to a top capping layer where it can be extracted from the device. If successful, this work could greatly increase the amount of light directed toward the user’s eye. To improve the performance of this newly created device an extremely small patterned surface can be applied on top to create a small surface texture on the capping layer of the OLED to scatter out the light. This can be achieved with fabricated stamps made out of PDMS, an elastomeric material commonly used for soft lithography that can pattern feature sizes all the way down to the micron scale by depositing organic material onto the stamp and transferring onto the OLED. Because there are many variables in this process, a large part of the work involves trying different conditions for stamp creation and material transfer to determine the best possible transfer with as little loss as possible. Through this work we hope to achieve an effective transfer method for creating a patterned surface onto the TEOLED capping layer.
