SUMMARY

The rapid development of organic electronics is leading to a number of promising devices in the area of energy sources and conservation (e.g., solar cells and solid-state lighting), while also advancing display technology, sensors, and thin-film transistors. One obstacle to this development is the susceptibility of these devices to water vapor and oxygen, which are well-known to cause rapid degradation in many organic electronic devices. In order to guarantee the minimum lifetime needed for various applications, high barrier performance encapsulation materials and structures must be developed and has been the object of much experimental research. However, there is a dearth of comprehensive studies which link the characterization, modeling, and integration of ultra-high barrier films with organic electronics. The present work investigates the processing and development of high quality single-layer and multilayer encapsulation architectures for ultra-high barrier films. For compatibility with organic electronics, this study focuses on low temperature fabrication processes which can lead to poor film quality. To circumvent this issue, a unique encapsulation processing procedure which combines plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition along with high quality atomic layer deposition. This structure dramatically improves the barrier performance through the filling of defects in the films. A detailed study of the water vapor permeation mechanism through thin-film layers is presented. In addition, this study elucidates the role of thin-film modulus and residual stress on the damage development in the encapsulation films under flexural deformation and presents a mechanically robust encapsulation structure for the realization of flexible organic electronic devices. Finally, fully characterized encapsulation layers are integrated with organic solar cells to validate the effectiveness of the barrier layers. The compatibility of the encapsulation process with organic devices is investigated by comparing the performance parameters of device before and after encapsulation. The parameters of encapsulated organic devices with various encapsulation structures are compared with their initial values as a function of exposure time to atmosphere to provide guidelines for designing efficient barrier layer.