Substrate designs and contacts for organic light-emitting displays

In the past several years, many research groups have been working on the engineering of organic light-emitting devices (OLEDs) into emissive displays. One of the major manufacturing challenges is that vacuum-deposited, low-molecular-weight organic materials are not very resistant to thermal and chemical processing, and it is therefore problematic to pattern them using standard masking and etching techniques. This has resulted in a substantial amount of the display design being manufactured into the substrate prior to the substrate being coated with the multilayer film of organic materials. In this paper an analysis of the various anode-on-substrate configurations which may be employed for OLED displays will be described and several high-work-function anodes as substitutes for the standard OLED anode of indium-tin oxide discussed.