Abstract
Flexible organic light emitting diodes (F-OLEDs) requires excellent moisture permeation barriers to minimize the degradation of the F-OLEDs device. Specifically, F-OLEDs device need a barrier layer that transmits less than $10^{-6}g/m^2/day$ of water and $10^{-5}g/m^2/day$ of oxygen. To increase the life time of F-OLEDs, therefore, it is indispensable to protect the organic materials from water and oxygen. Severe groups have reported on multi-layerd barriers consisting inorganic thin films deposited by plasma enhenced chemical deposition (PECVD) or sputtering. However, it is difficult to control the formation of granular-type morphology and microscopic pinholes in PECVD and sputtering. On the contrary, atomic layer deoposition (ALD) is free of pinhole, highly uniform, conformal films and show good step coverage. Thus, $Al_2O_3/TiO_2$ multi-layer was deposited onto the polyethersulfon (PES) substrate by electron cyclotron resonance atomic layer deposition (ECR-ALD), and the water vapor transmission rates (WVTR) were measured. WVTR of moisture permeation barriers is dependent upon density of films and initial state of polymer surface. A significant reduction of WVTR was achieved by increasing density of films and by applying low plasma induced interlayer on the PES substrate. In order to minimize damage of polymer surface, a 10 nm thick $TiO_2$ was deposited on PES prior to a $Al_2O_3$ ECR-ALD process. High quality barriers were developed from $Al_2O_3$ barriers on the $TiO_2$ interlayer. WVTR of $Al_2O_3$ by introducing $TiO_2$ interlayer was recorded in the range of $10^{-3}g/m^2.day$ at $38^{\circ}C$ and 100% relative humidity using a MOCON instrument. The WVTR was two orders of magnitude smaller than $Al_2O_3$ barriers directly grown on PES substrate without the $TiO_2$ interlayer. Thus, we can consider that the $Al_2O_3/TiO_2$ multi-layer passivation can be one of the most suitable F-OLEDs passivation films.
