OLED Displays

Filmetrics Applications (Thickness Measurement) – OLED Displays

Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLEDs)

OLEDs are rapidly moving from the research lab to the fab.  Their bright, ultra thin, and dynamic characteristics make them appealing for many display applications, ranging from cell phones to TVs.  The metrology of the many thin films that make up such displays is of critical importance, and too critical to be entrusted to traditional contact profilometry which can damage these relatively soft layers.  Filmetrics F20-UV, F40-UV and PARTS-UV instruments offer inexpensive, robust, and non-invasive metrology of simple prototype devices and fully-pixelated displays.  Because Filmetrics instruments are spectroscopic one can also detect chemical changes that can occur in these atmospherically sensitive materials.

Measure Transparent Conductive Oxides

Whether one encounters Indium Tin Oxide, Zinc Oxide, or Poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene), Filmetrics proprietary ITO optical model, coupled with Filmetris visible/near IR instruments, can solve for both thickness and optical constants at a fraction of the cost and effort of a spectroscopic ellipsometer.

Measure Complicated Organic Materials

A typical OLED requires a number of specialized layers: Hole Injection Layers, Hole Transport Layers, and Recombination/Emission layers.  All these layers contain unusual organic molecules (either small molecule and/or polymers).  Dealing with such materials could be a challenge for spectral reflectance due to their highly anomalous optical dispersion, but not for Filmetrics.  Filmtrics materials database stretches back to the very beginnings of OLED, and can deal with the high index dispersion and multiple UV features encountered with these molecules.

Films on Flexible Substrates

OLEDs offer the promise of enabling truly flexible displays.  This requires measurement on highly birefringence substrates such as PET.  This poses a serious problem for metrologies such as ellipsometry: one must either model this additional optical complication or sandpaper the PET’s backside.  Neither of these approaches are required for Filmetrics unpolarized spectral reflectance.  This yields significant time savings for both user training and measurement cycle time.

Measurements Inside a Glove Box

OLED materials are extremely sensitive to water and oxygen.  Many research groups require measurements inside the controlled atmosphere of a dry N2 glove box.  The small form factor of Filmetrics instruments and their modular, fiber optic based design easily allows real time “in the box” measurements of unencapsulated devices.

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