Researchers from the University of Michigan developed a new electrode design for OLED devices, that can increase light output by up to 20% compared to current electrodes. The new electrode is compatible with current production processes.
The new design helps to minimize the waveguiding effect, which traps around 80% of the light produced by the OLED emitters. The researchers used a modal elimination approach, which involves optimizing the organic stack and the replacing the ITO anode with a thin film of silver deposited on a layer of copper. This kind of approach can be applied to other light emitting structures such as inorganic LEDs, perovskite LEDs, quantum dots and more.
The University of Michigan has filed for patent protection for this technology, which hopefully can be applied to commercial OLED devices.
