Ultrasonic spray coating of polyethylenimine (ethoxylated) as electron injection and transport layer for organic light emitting diodes

The lighting of the future is expected to be light weight, flexible, highly efficient, non-expensive and fabricated in an environmentally friendly way. Organic light emitting diodes meet all these requirements and can be fabricated using inexpensive and roll-to-roll compatible printing techniques. They however often use low work function, highly reactive metals, such as barium and calcium to facilitate electron injection, deposited using expensive and non-continuous vacuum techniques. Efficient and stable alternatives can be found in the aliphatic amines, polyethylenimine and polyethylenimine(ethoxylated), which shift the work function of aluminum favorably for electron injection. This work demonstrates ultrasonic spray coating of polyethylenimine and polyethylenimine(ethoxylated) as electron injection and transport layer for OLEDs, reducing the work function of the aluminum cathode by 0.355 eV allowing a luminous efficacy comparable to that of the OLEDs using calcium/aluminum electrodes. Slightly higher luminous results are noted for the OLEDs with spin coated PEIE, indicating that the surface morphology and thickness of the polyethylenimine(ethoxylated) layer are crucial factors: ultrasonic spray coated polyethylenimine(ethoxylated) layers have an increased overall thickness and surface roughness. This study confirms the versatility of ultrasonic spray coating and the suitability of polyethylenimine(ethoxylated) as excellent electron injection and transport layer for OLEDs and paves the way towards fully spray coated OLEDs. The produced OLEDs were measured using a Keithley 2401 source meter (Keithley Instruments, Cleveland, Ohio, USA) to obtain the current and voltage characteristics and by using an absolute calibrated integrating sphere spectrometer from Avantes (Apeldoorn, The Netherlands) to acquire the luminous flux. The luminous efficacy was then calculated by dividing the luminous flux by the used electrical power. This data is presented here.