Interlayer Engineering of Flexible and Large Area Red Organic Light Emitting Diodes Based on a N-Annulated Perylene Diimide Dimer

Flexible red OLEDs based on a quadruple layer stack in-between electrodes with 160 mm² active area were fabricated in ambient air on PET via slot-die coating. For the OLED structure PET/ITO/PEDOT:PSS/PVK/PFO:tPDI₂N-EH/ZnO/Ag the ink formulations and coating parameters for each layer were systematically evaluated and optimized. The air-stable red-light emitting material tPDI₂N-EH was successfully utilized as blended homogeneous film with PFO for the emitting layer. The use of an organic hole-transport layer (PVK) and inorganic electron injection layer (ZnO) significantly improved the brightness of the reference device from 4 cd/m² to 303 cd/m². Surface analysis using AFM measurements showed that PVK interlayer reduced the surface roughness of the hole injection layer (PEDT:PSS) from 0.45 nm to 0.17 nm, which improved the ability to form uniform emitting layers on top. In addition, the ZnO interlayer improved the average roughness of the device from 1.26 nm to 0.85 nm and reduced the turn-on voltage of the device from 5.0 V to 2.8 V.