Abstract

Organic thin films with smooth surfaces are mandated for high-performance organic electronic devices. Abrupt nucleation and aggregation during film formation are two main factors that forbid smooth surfaces. Here, we report a simple fast cooling (FC) adapted physical vapor deposition (FCPVD) method to produce ultrasmooth organic thin films through effectively suppressing the aggregation of adsorbed molecules. We have found that thermal energy control is essential for the spread of molecules on a substrate by diffusion and it prohibits the unwanted nucleation of adsorbed molecules. FCPVD is employed for cooling the horizontal tube-type organic vapor deposition setup to effectively remove thermal energy applied to adsorbed molecules on a substrate. The organic thin films prepared using the FCPVD method have remarkably ultrasmooth surfaces with less than 0.4 nm root mean square (RMS) roughness on various substrates, even in a low vacuum, which is highly comparable to the ones prepared using conventional high-vacuum deposition methods. Our results provide a deeper understanding of the role of thermal energy employed to substrates during organic film growth using the PVD process and pave the way for cost-effective and high-performance organic devices.

Highlights

  • IntroductionAcademic Editors: Victor Leca and Maria Dinescu

  • Organic thin films are an effective material for device applications, such as organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) and organic photovoltaics [1,2,3,4,5,6]

  • We show that the aggregation of deposited molecules can be effectively suppressed by employing a fast cooling step in the physical vapor deposition (PVD) process (FCPVD)

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Summary

Introduction

Academic Editors: Victor Leca and Maria Dinescu. Organic thin films are an effective material for device applications, such as organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) and organic photovoltaics [1,2,3,4,5,6]. Developing methods for the deposition of organic thin film has been an important research topic in the material sciences fields for a long time [4,5,6,7,8]. One of many urgent issues regarding organic thin film is to achieve high quality—in terms of surface smoothness—that is largely hindered by the uncontrolled nucleation of target molecules or the formation of irregular aggregates [7,9,10,11,12]

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