The U.S. Display Consortium (USDC), a public/private partnership chartered with developing the flexible electronics and displays industry supply chain, has announced the completion of its co-sponsored program with Dow Corning Corporation (Dow Corning) for the development of a new hole injection transport system that is compatible with OLED ink jet fabrication. This new Hole Injection Material (HIM) formulation and inkjet process has demonstrated improved performance, while addressing many of the shortcomings of current HIM systems. Dow Corning’s achievement has the potential to increase OLED performance and reduce OLED fabrication costs for use in the flat panel display industry.
During the USDC-funded program, Dow Corning’s team was able to achieve several objectives: synthesis and characterization of a new class of hole injection material candidates for integration and compatibility with existing light emitting materials; optimization of HIM candidates and fabrication of OLED devices with longer lifetimes, improved brightness and efficiency versus incumbent materials; and the development of the HIM for use in ink jet process fabrication of OLED devices. “In order to achieve the program objectives we had to develop a novel HIM for light emitting polymer materials, conduct PLED fabrication, PLED testing and HIM characterization methods, and develop an ink jet printing process compatible with our new hole injection materials,” explained Dr. Toshio Suzuki, principal investigator and associate research scientist of Dow Corning. “The support and collaboration of Dr. Ghassan Jabour and his team at the Flexible Display Center at Arizona State University was invaluable to the success of this program.”
USDC’s HIM program achieved its goal for developing a new group of siloxane-based hole injection materials, which can be cast as solid thin films with excellent transmittance, smoothness and solvent resistance,” stated Dr. Mark Hartney, chief technology officer for USDC. “We are very pleased to see the results for improving ink jet printing, demonstrated through a viable application method for processing Dow Corning HIMs.”
USDC Dow Corning
