In this study, we report a contact printing technique that uses polyurethane-acrylate (PUA) polymers as the printing stamps to pattern electroluminescent layers of organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs). We demonstrate that electroluminescent thin films can be printed with high uniformity and resolution. We also show that the performance of the printed devices can be improved via postprinting thermal annealing, and that the external quantum efficiency of the printed devices is comparable with the efficiency of the vacuum-deposited OLEDs. Our results suggest that the PUA-based contact printing can be used as an alternative to the traditional shadow mask deposition, permitting manufacturing of OLED displays with the resolution up to the diffraction limit of visible-light emission.
Keywords: contact printing; high-resolution printing; organic light emitting diodes; polyurethane acrylate; thin-film patterning.