Interlayer Engineering of Flexible and Large-Area Red Organic-Light-Emitting Diodes Based on an 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 to 303 cd/m2. Surface analysis using AFM measurements showed that the PVK interlayer reduced the surface roughness of the hole injection layer (PEDOT:PSS) from 0.45 to 0.17 nm, which improved the ability to form uniform emitting layers on top. In addition, the ZnO interlayer decreased surface roughness from 1.26 to 0.85 nm and reduced the turn-on voltage of the device from 5.0 to 2.8 V.