Thin‐Film Electrostatic Discharge Protection for Highly Segmented OLEDs in Automotive Applications

Abstract Future autonomous driving requires new lighting solutions. Communication in between other cars and pedestrians, which fulfills the requirements of the automotive lighting industry, is needed. A very promising lighting solution for this application are highly segmented organic light‐emitting diodes (OLEDs). Unfortunately, small area OLEDs are very sensitive to electrostatic discharge due to the small capacitance of the OLED segments. This study presents a solution for highly segmented OLEDs to fulfill automotive requirements regarding electrostatic discharge (ESD) without cost driving external components but through the improvement of the OLED itself. This solution is designed to be cheap and simple in fabrication, derived from standard photolithography to ensure no impact on existing supply chains and flexible OLED fabrication. After introducing the improved device concept for highly segmented OLEDs and its boundary conditions, a detailed view on the corresponding fabrication steps is given. The capacitive response of the protected OLED segments with respect to OLEDs without the introduced protection layer is characterized via impedance spectroscopy. The results exhibit the functionality of the ESD protection layer and prove with automotive ESD stability requirements compliance.