Abstract
The implementation of organic electronic devices on fibers is a challenging task, not yet investigated in detail. As was shown earlier, a direct transition from a flat device structure to a fiber substrate is in principle possible. However, a more detailed investigation of the process reveals additional complexities than just the transition in geometry. It will be shown, that the layer formation of evaporated materials behaves differently due to the multi-angled incidence on the fibers surface. In order to achieve homogenous layers the evaporation process has to be adapted. Additionally, the fiber geometry itself facilitates damaging of its surface due to mechanical impact and leads to a high surface roughness, thereby often hindering commercial fibers to be used as substrates. In this article, a treatment of commercial polymer-coated glass fibers will be demonstrated that allows for the fabrication of rather flexible organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) with cylindrical emission characteristics. Since OLEDs rely the most on a smooth substrate, fibers undergoing the proposed treatment are applicable for other organic electronic devices such as transistors and solar cells. Finally, the technique also supports the future fabrication of organic electronics not only in smart textiles and woven electronics but also in bent surfaces, which opens a wide range of applications.
Highlights
The vision of mass-produced smart textiles with electronic functionalities such as light emission or current switching for applications in textile displays, flexible lighting and wearable electronics is currently an interesting topic in textile research
In order to be able to fulfill all necessary requirements for fibers as substrates, a system was built from scratch
For the investigation of possible necessary process alterations when changing from flat device structures to fibers, organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) instead of other devices like organic field-effect transistors (OFETs), etc., were chosen as model devices
Summary
The vision of mass-produced smart textiles with electronic functionalities such as light emission or current switching for applications in textile displays, flexible lighting and wearable electronics is currently an interesting topic in textile research. This becomes important if the size of the active area is of concern like in OLEDs or sensing applications In principle, such fiber-based devices could be directly woven into the fabric and contacted in the same production step by conductive yarns [15,16], thereby opening the possibility of a potentially low cost production of textile-integrated electronics. The question arises what hampers further progress in fiber shaped small molecule-based organic devices To answer this question a more detailed look on the processing of devices on fiber substrates is taken and will detail the processing-related challenges in this field. The importance of the fiber substrate quality will be addressed and the question how to obtain smooth surfaces on commercially available fibers by a thermal treatment will be investigated
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