UNDERSTANDING AND MITIGATING CATASTROPHIC FAILURE IN ORGANIC LIGHT-EMITTING DIODES FOR RELIABLE LIGHTING
Open Access
Author:
Ding, Zelong
Graduate Program:
Materials Science and Engineering
Degree:
Master of Science
Document Type:
Master Thesis
Date of Defense:
September 05, 2018
Committee Members:
Noel Christopher Giebink, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor Joshua Alexander Robinson, Committee Member Jerzy Ruzyllo, Committee Member
Keywords:
Catastrophic failure Defect Heat transfer OLED lighting
Abstract:
Catastrophic organic light-emitting diode (OLED) lighting panel failure due to electrical shorting is arguably the most pressing reliability-related challenge for the industry today. Unfortunately, very little is understood about what initiates these shorts and why they grow over time to become catastrophic. We developed an imaging technique to identify the potential defects OLED, and we found two general classes of them. Through various characterization methods, we uncovered the nature of these two defects and connected one to the catastrophic failure. Based on experiments and computational modelling, we proposed a mechanistic model to explain the way in which the initial defects grow over time to become catastrophic shorts. In the end, we made a few suggestions to approach the OLED reliability issue with the catastrophic failure.
