Solution-processed bottom-emitting polymer light-emitting diodes on a textile substrate towards a wearable display

Abstract

Proposed herein are textile-based polymer light-emitting diodes (PLEDs) prepared via a spin coating process for a wearable display. Multilayers consisting of alumina (Al2O3) and poly(vinyl alcohol) were used as a planarization layer to fabricate PLEDs on a textile, and non-inverted bottom-emitting PLEDs were fabricated on a planarized textile. Despite the light loss caused by the woven and opaque textile substrate, the fabricated device showed high maximum luminous efficiency (9.72 cd/A) and high maximum power efficiency (7.17 lm/W), and no angular dependency of the EL spectrum was observed on the textile-based PLEDs. In addition, the fabricated PLEDs showed stable operation under bending stress with a bending radius of 2.5 mm. In summary, high-performance PLEDs were developed using a solution process on a real textile, and the feasibility of realizing textile-based PLEDs for a large-area wearable display is suggested.