EAGER: Toward Scalable Manufacturing of Nanostructured Organic Electronics

University Of California-Berkeley, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

This Early Grant for Exploratory Research (EAGER) award provides funding for the development of a scalable nanomanufacturing technology for achieving high performance organic light-emitting diodes. Imprinting molds will be fabricated on which two levels of nanoscale geometry will be vertically stacked. The first level of the mold will define nanostructured organic emission layer that improves light extraction from the organic light-emitting diode, while the second level will define nanostructured anode-organic interface that improves positive charge injection into the light-emitting layer. Experiments involving varying the design of the nanoscale imprinting geometry will be performed, and both small molecule and polymer based nanostructured organic light-emitting diodes will be fabricated and characterized. The developed technology will be implemented to a roll-to-roll manufacturing system through an established industrial collaboration. If successful, the results of this research will lead to a scalable approach that can overcome the challenge of mold misalignment and dimensional change encountered in traditional large area roll-to-roll nanomanufacturing processes due to the use of a sequence of masks. The primary goal of this work is to develop and apply the multi-level single-mold nanoimprinting technology that will enable the realization of high performance organic light-emitting diodes having nanostructures that can enhance light extraction and charge injection. In addition to a scalable nanomanufacturing tool, the proposed work will also contribute to the field of energy efficiency by developing high performance light-emitting diodes as a next generation lighting source.