Short-circuit prevention strategies in organic light-emitting diodes and solar cells

Abstract

Short-circuit prevention and repair strategies are essential to allow for upscaled production of organic electronic devices based on thin-film production technology. Occurrence of short circuits is a consequence of manufacturing imperfections and particle contamination. After giving a concise review of short-circuit prevention methods for organic thin-film devices in the open literature of the past decade, this overview article summarizes our recent work on short-circuit prevention in organic light-emitting diodes and organic solar cells by chemical oxidation methods. Our main strategy is based on self-aligned disruption of the conductivity of exposed areas of the typically applied hole transport material poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrene sulfonate) by aqueous sodium hypochlorite, prior to cathode deposition. The ten orders of magnitude decrease in local conductivity obtained proves sufficient to let deliberately flawed devices operate at pristine performance levels. We next show that in the case of organic solar cells based on a lithium fluoride/aluminium cathode the shunting junctions can be made sufficiently resistive to allow for near unflawed operation, without applying wet treatment.