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The emerging field of printed electronics uses large amounts of printing and coating solvents during fabrication, which commonly are deposited and evaporated within spaces available to workers. It is in this context unfortunate that many of the currently employed solvents are non-desirable from health, safety, or environmental perspectives. Here, we address this issue through the development of a tool for the straightforward identification of functional and "green" replacement solvents. In short, the tool organizes a large set of solvents according to their Hansen solubility parameters, ink properties, and sustainability descriptors, and through systematic iteration delivers suggestions for green alternative solvents with similar dissolution capacity as the current non-sustainable solvent. We exemplify the merit of the tool in a case study on a multi-solute ink for high-performance light-emitting electrochemical cells, where a non-desired solvent was successfully replaced by two benign alternatives. The green-solvent selection tool is freely available at: www.opeg-umu.se/green-solvent-tool.

Organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) and light-emitting electrochemical cells (LECs) exhibit different operational modes that render them attractive for complementary applications, but their dependency on the device temperature has not been systematically compared. Here, the effects of a carefully controlled device temperature on the performance of OLEDs and LECs based on two common emissive organic semiconductors are investigated. It is found that the peak luminance and current efficacy of the two OLEDs are relatively temperature independent, whereas, the corresponding LECs exhibit a significant increase by approximate to 85% when the temperature is changed from 20 to 80 degrees C. A combination of simulations and measurements reveal that this deviating behavior is consistent with a shift of the emission zone from closer to the transparent anode toward the center of the active material for both the OLEDs and the LECs, which in turn can be induced by a stronger positive temperature dependence of the mobility of the holes than the electrons.

The light-emitting electrochemical cell (LEC) allows for energy- and cost-efficient printing and coating fabrication of its entire device structure, including both electrodes and the single-layer active material. This attractive fabrication opportunity is enabled by the electrochemical action of mobile ions in the active material. However, a related and up to now overlooked issue is that such solution-fabricated LECs commonly comprise electrode/active-material interfaces that are open for transfer of the mobile ions, and it is herein demonstrated that a majority of the mobile anions in a common spray-coated active material can transfer into a spray-coated poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrene-sulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) positive electrode during LEC operation. Since it is well established that the mobile ion concentration in the active material has a profound influence on the LEC performance, this significant ion transfer is an important factor that should be considered in the design of low-cost LEC devices that deliver high performance.

Electroluminescent devices become warm during operation, and their performance can, therefore, be severely limited at high drive current density. Herein, the effects of this self‐heating on the operation of a light‐emitting electrochemical cell (LEC) are systematically studied. A drive current density of 50 mA cm−2 can result in a local device temperature for a free‐standing LEC that exceeds 50 °C within a short period of operation, which in turn induces premature device degradation as manifested in the rapidly decreasing luminance and increasing voltage. Furthermore, this undesired self‐heating for a free‐standing thin‐film LEC can be suppressed by the employment of a device architecture featuring high thermal conductance and a small emission‐area fill factor, since the corresponding improved heat conduction to the nonemissive regions facilitates more efficient heat transfer to the ambient surroundings. In addition, the reported differences in performance between small‐area and large‐area LECs as well as between flexible‐plastic and rigid‐glass LECs are rationalized, culminating in insights that can be useful for the rational design of LEC devices with suppressed self‐heating and high performance.

The light-emitting electrochemical cell (LEC) exhibits capacity for efficient charge injection from two air stable electrodes into a single-layer active material, which is commonly interpreted as implying that the LEC operation is independent of the electrode selection. Here, we demonstrate that this is far from the truth and that the electrode selection instead has a strong influence on the LEC performance. We systematically investigate 13 different materials for the positive anode and negative cathode in a common LEC configuration with the conjugated polymer Super Yellow as the electroactive emitter and find that Ca, Mn, Ag, Al, Cu, indium tin oxide (ITO), and Au function as the LEC cathode, whereas ITO and Ni can operate as the LEC anode. Importantly, we demonstrate that the electrochemical stability of the electrode is paramount and that particularly electrochemical oxidation of the anode can prohibit the functional LEC operation. We finally report that it appears preferable to design the device so that the heights of the injection barriers at the two electrode/active material interfaces are balanced in order to mitigate electrode-induced quenching of the light emission. As such, this study has expanded the set of air-stable electrode materials available for functional LEC operation and also established a procedure for the evaluation and design of future efficient electrode materials.

The light-emitting electrochemical cell promises cost-efficient, large-area emissive applications, as its characteristic in-situ doping enables use of air-stabile electrodes and a solution-processed single-layer active material. However, mutual exclusion of high efficiency and high brightness has proven a seemingly fundamental problem. Here we present a generic approach that overcomes this critical issue, and report on devices equipped with air-stabile electrodes and outcoupling structure that deliver a record-high efficiency of 99.2 cd A(-1) at a bright luminance of 1910 cd m(-2). This device significantly outperforms the corresponding optimized organic light-emitting diode despite the latter employing calcium as the cathode. The key to this achievement is the design of the host-guest active material, in which tailored traps suppress exciton diffusion and quenching in the central recombination zone, allowing efficient triplet emission. Simultaneously, the traps do not significantly hamper electron and hole transport, as essentially all traps in the transport regions are filled by doping.

The emerging field of organic electronics is heralded because it promises low-cost and flexible devices, and it was recently demonstrated that a light-emitting electrochemical cell (LEC) can be fabricated with cost-efficient methods under ambient air. However, the LEC turns sensitive to oxygen and water during light-emission, and it is therefore timely to identify flexible encapsulation structures. Here, we demonstrate that a multilayer film, featuring a water and oxygen barrier property of ≈1 × 10^–3 g/m²/day and ≈1 × 10^–3 cm³/m²/bar/day respectively, is fit for this task. By sandwiching an LEC between such multilayer barriers, as attached by a UV-curable epoxy, we realize flexible LECs with performance on par with identical glass-encapsulated devices, and which remain functional after one year storage under air.

We report on the realization of an ultra-flexible, light-weight and large-area emissive textile device. The anode and active material of a light-emitting electrochemical cell (LEC) were deposited by conformal spray-coating of a transparent fabric-based electrode, comprising a weave of fine Ag-coated Cu wires and poly(ethylene naphthalene) monofilament fibers embedded in a polyurethane matrix. The yellow-emitting textile featured low turn-on voltage (5 V), high maximum brightness (>4000 cd m−2), good efficiency (3.4 cd A−1), and reasonable lifetime (180 h at >100 cd m−2). Uniform emission to the eye was attained from thin and highly flexible textiles featuring a large emission area of 42 cm2, without resorting to planarization of the partially wavy-shaped (valley-to-peak height = 2.7 μm) fabric electrode. The key enabling factors for the functional emissive textile are the characteristic in situ electrochemical doping of LEC devices, the 'dry' spray-sintering deposition of the active material, and the attractive mechanical, electronic and optical properties of the fabric-based electrode.

We present a direct-write patterning method for the realization of electroluminescent (EL) line art using a surface-emissive light-emitting electrochemical cell with its electrolyte and EL material separated into a bilayer structure. The line-art emission isachieved through subtractive patterning of the electrolyte layer with a stylus, and the single-step patterning can be either manual for personalization and uniqueness or automated for high throughput and repeatability. We demonstrate that the light emission is effectuated by cation-assisted electron injection in the patterned regions and that the resulting emissive lines can be as narrow as a few micrometers. The versatility of the method is demonstrated through the attainment of a wide range of light-emission patterns and colors using a variety of different materials. We propose that this low-voltage-driven and easy-to-modify luminescent line-art technology could be of interest for emerging applications, such as active packaging and personalized gadgets.

A revolution is ongoing in the field of artificial light emission, with two prime examples being the quickly growing application of the energy-efficient light-emitting diode (LED) in illumination and the introduction of the high-contrast organic LED (OLED) display in various handheld appliances. It is anticipated that the next big breakthrough will constitute the emergence of a true low-cost technology, which features novel and attractive form factors such as flexibility, light-weight, and large-area emission. To realize this challenging vision, it is mandatory to identify an emissive technology that can be fabricated in a low-energy and material-conservative manner. In this context, recent demonstrations of a roll-to-roll (R2R) compatible coating and printing of thin-film light-emitting electrochemical cells (LECs) on flexible substrates are highly interesting. Here, we review these achievements, and perform a first analysis of the merits of different LEC fabrication methods with regard to material consumption, capital investment, running cost, and throughput. Among our findings we mention a fault-tolerant, small-volume batch fabrication of LEC devices using spray sintering, which can be executed at a low installment cost of 100000Euro, but where the large-area devices currently carry a fabrication cost tag of 14000Eurom(-2). The true appeal of the technology is, therefore, better visualized in the high-volume R2R-coating scenario, for which the installment cost is 20times higher, but where the projected price tag is much more attractive (11Euro per m(2)). If such flexible and light-weight (and potentially metal-free) sheets are driven at a luminance of 1000cdm(-2), the cost per lumen is a mere 0.0036Eurolm(-1), which is one order of magnitude lower than the projected future costs for LEDs and OLEDs.