Ag nanowire electrode with patterned dry film photoresist insulator for flexible organic light-emitting diode with various designs

In this study, the utilization of a dry film photoresist (DFR) was explored for fabricating a patterned insulating layer in Ag nanowire (AgNW) bottom electrodes with various designs for flexible organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). With a single hot-pressing step, a pre-patterned DFR insulator was attached onto the AgNW electrodes, thus forming insulated electrodes in desired patterns. In the same hot-pressing step, AgNWs were also embedded into poly(methyl methacrylate), which sufficiently reduced the root mean square (RMS) roughness (~5 nm) for use in OLED lighting. Using DFR, AgNW electrodes with various shapes were fabricated to realize shaped flexible OLED lighting. The performance of OLED lighting employing the AgNW/patterned-DFR insulator electrode was comparable to that of indium‑tin-oxide-based OLED lighting. Further, the DFR insulator was utilized as a planarization layer in a paper-based OLED lighting, which operated well with a turn-on voltage of 3.5 V and maximum luminance of 157 cd/m2 at 7.5 V.