Polymer electroluminescent devices processed by inkjet printing: I. Polymer light-emitting logo

Abstract

Inkjet printing (IJP) technology is a popular technology for desktop publishing. Since some of the conducting (or conjugated) polymers are solution processable, IJP technology becomes an ideal method for printing polymer light-emitting diodes with high resolution. Unfortunately, the polymer film printed from an inkjet printer usually consists of pin-holes, and this intrinsic character makes it unsuitable for fabricating high quality polymer electronic devices, particularly for devices in the sandwich structure. In this letter, we submit a hybrid structure, which consists of an inkjet printed layer in conjunction with another uniform spin coated polymer layer, as an alternative to the regular inkjet printed structure. The uniform layer serves as a buffer layer to seal the pin-holes and the IJP layer is the layer consisting of the desired pattern, for example the red–green–blue dots for a multicolor display. To demonstrate, we applied this hybrid technology to fabricate efficient and large area polymer light-emitting logos. The use of this concept represents a whole new technology of fabricating polymer electronic devices with lateral patterning capability.