Investigation on a short circuit of large-area OLED lighting panels

A short circuit often arises from large-area organic light-emitting device (OLED) lighting panels due to particles (i.e. dust, organic or metal debris) or the spike-like surface of the indium–tin–oxide (ITO) anode. On the emergence of a short circuit, an instant current crowding occurs, thereby reducing substantially the resistance of the panels and causing a failure of a dimming control. In this paper, we investigate the effect of the surface morphology of ITO on the resistance and dimmability of the panels. We have demonstrated that the peak-to-valley roughness of ITO should be much less than 20 nm or the resistance of the panels should be much higher than 1 MΩ in order to avoid an unwanted short-circuit phenomenon and thus achieve the high-yield fabrication of OLED lighting panels. It is also addressed that much care is taken to ensure a dimming control of OLED lighting panels with a larger active area because the resistance of those panels varies depending more sensitively on the surface roughness of ITO.