Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLEDs) have gained considerable momentum as a new technology for lighting within the last decade. Ultra thin and flexible form factors enable new luminare designs and unique lighting solutions.
Complexity and price
Although first products are in the market, OLEDs are still faced with major obstacles for OLED lighting to really expand into the general lighting market. Above all, high costs and competition with inorganic LEDs. This is in partly due to the intricate production process: OLED materials are evaporated by vacuum processes and expensive ITO sputtered anode substrates are used.
Cost control
Heraeus offers two OLED materials for solution processing (Figure 1, 2):
- A hole-injection layer (HIL), between the anode and the OLED layer stack
- A transparent, conductive electrode (anode) that can planarize a metal mesh or other rough electrodes, e.g. metal nanowires