High-Performance Silver Nanowire Flexible Transparent Electrodes under Current Stress and the Application for Long Lifetime OLEDs

This paper reports a long lifetime flexible OLED based on TiO2 modified silver nanowire (AgNW) network flexible transparent electrode (FTE). For the AgNW@TiO2 FTE, an ultrathin (2-5 nm), conformal, and continuous TiO2 shell is coated around AgNWs by a facile and cost-effective solution-processed sol-gel method, which can significantly improve the stability of AgNWs under current stress. By embedding the AgNW network on polymer substrate, the surface roughness of FTEs reduced significantly. OLEDs were prepared by spin coating and evaporation techniques on indium-tin-oxide (ITO) electrodes and AgNW FTEs. As replacing ITO with AgNWs can improve the light-emitting efficiency, the OLEDs based on AgNW FTE can extend the lifetime. Besides, TiO2 protective shell on AgNW network makes the devices working steadily. The lifetime of ITO-OLED, AgNW-OLED, AgNW@TiO2-OLED are 200 min, 235 min, and 355 min, respectively.

I. Introduction

Recently, organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), with high energy efficiency and low energy consumption, have been considered as a revolutionary alternative for next-generation flat panel displays and energy consumption [1]. With the increasing demand on flexible displays, the flexibility of OLEDs becomes a research hotspot for flexible optoelectronic systems [2].