Low-cost supercritical CO2/H2O2 treatment on ITO anodes of fluorescent organic light-emitting diodes

Abstract A simple and cost-effective approach is proposed as an alternative to conventional oxygen plasma treatment to modify surface property of Indium tin oxide (ITO) anode of a fluorescent organic light-emitting diode (OLED). This was achieved by treating the ITO anode in supercritical CO 2 (SCCO 2 ) fluids with hydrogen peroxide (H 2 O 2 ). The SCCO 2 /H 2 O 2 treatment yielded an ITO work function of 5.35 eV after 15 min treatment at 85 °C and 4000 psi, which was significant higher than 4.8 eV of the as-cleaned ITO surface and was slightly less than 5.5 eV of the ITO surface treated by oxygen plasma. The highest work function achieved was 5.55 eV after 45 min SCCO 2 /H 2 O 2 treatment. The SCCO 2 /H 2 O 2 treatment can be used to tailor the ITO work function through changing the operation pressure of the treatment. In addition, the correlated dependence of OLED performance on the ITO anodes with and without the treatments was investigated. The maximum power efficiency of 1.94 lm/W was obtained at 17.3 mA/cm 2 for the device with 15 min SCCO 2 /H 2 O 2 treatment at 4000 psi. This power efficiency was 19.3% and 33.8% higher than those of the oxygen plasma treatment and as-clean, respectively. The improvement in device efficiency by the SCCO 2 /H 2 O 2 treatments can be attributed to enhanced hole injection and balance in charge carriers due to increased work function and surface energy of the ITO anodes.