Thin Solid Films, Vol.517, No.9, 2941-2944, 2009
Mechanism of droplet generation in silver thin films for organic light-emitting diode displays
Thin silver film is widely used as the cathode in organic light-emitting diode displays and it is generally fabricated using the thermal evaporation method. But during the evaporation process, there is an inevitable outgassing problem and this creates high viscosity bubbles in melted silver. When the bubbles break, the high energy released scatters silver droplets which damage the silver surface. In this study, we were able to decrease the number of droplets from 6,171 to 278 with a degassing process of 400 degrees C for 6 h before proceeding with a thermal evaporation process. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords:Silver;Droplets;Thin films;Coalescence mechanism;Bubbles;Evaporation;Organic light emitting diodes;Confocal microscopy;Scanning electron microscopy