Transparent ITiO film electrodes on polyethylene terephthalate by oxygen plasma treatment for high-performance flexible electroluminescence device

Abstract

A plastic electrode transparent is important to flexible optoelectronic devices. The metal oxides are coated in plastic by a variety of methods. The temperature in the process will not exceed 100 °C–150 °C or room temperature. It causes cracking on the film, adhesion on the plastic surface, and impurities on the film. Therefore, plasma oxygen was used to improve the film. In this work, we fabricate plastic electrode transparent with indium titanium oxide (ITiO) film using oxygen (O2) plasma treatment. ITiO film was deposited on polyethylene terephthalate (PET) using the RF magnetron sputtering method. The obtained ITiO PET films were plasma treated with O2 using the plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition system at plasma power and plasma treatment time condition. The structural properties and crystalline of ITiO film were confirmed by X-ray diffraction by scanning electron microscope and atomic force microscope. The high transmittance of ITiO films was about 80%–86% of all plasma treatment conditions. The lowest resistivity of the ITiO films with plasma treatment by plasma power condition and plasma treatment time was 7.92 × 10–1 Ω-cm of 300 W plasma power and 7.81 × 10−1 Ω-cm of 300 W plasma power, respectively. The luminance properties and EL efficiency of ITiO PET film was 89.21 cd m−2 and 0.0365 lm W−1 for a 60 min treatment time, 72.42 cd m−2 and 0.0297 lm W−1 for plasma power. The use of ITiO on a PET film by oxygen plasma treatment can improve the performance of the display device.