Plasmonic ultrathin metal grid electrode induced optical outcoupling enhancement in flexible organic light-emitting device

Abstract We propose a plasmonic ultrathin metal grid electrode as a promising light outcoupling strategy in a flexible organic light-emitting device (OLED). The plasmonic ultrathin metal grid electrode consists of an ultrathin Au grid film incorporating with plasmonic subwavelength corrugations, which was fabricated by lithography and nanoimprint technologies, demonstrates excellent optical and electrical properties as the substitute of ITO transparent electrode in flexible OLED. The transmittance of the plasmonic ultrathin Au grid electrode is 88.5% at 550 nm and the sheet resistance is about 36 Ω/sq. The periodic subwavelength corrugations of the plasmonic ultrathin Au grid electrode excite the surface plasmon-polariton (SPP) resonance which is an adverse optical mode with power loss in OLED, and the photons trapped in SPP mode are effectively outcoupled and extracted by the plasmonic corrugations. Compared to the ITO-based device, OLED based on plasmonic ultrathin Au grid electrode realizes a desirable enhancement of 60.3% in current efficiency. In addition, the flexible OLED based on the proposed electrode also exhibits decent mechanical robustness and flexibility with stable electroluminescence performances.