TY - JOUR
T1 - Enabling efficient electron injection in stretchable OLED
AU - Liu, Wei
AU - Zhang, Cheng
AU - Zhang, Zhiming
AU - Li, Yang
AU - Wai, Shinya
AU - Vriza, Aikaterini
AU - Dai, Yahao
AU - Wang, Glingna
AU - Wang, Yunfei
AU - Diroll, Benjamin T.
AU - Shan, Naisong
AU - Li, Songsong
AU - Chen, Du
AU - Guo, Peijun
AU - Zhu, Chenhui
AU - Xu, Jie
AU - de Pablo, Juan J.
AU - Wang, Sihong
N1 - This research is supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award number 2239618, and partially supported by the US National Institutes of Health (1DP2EB034563). This work, performed at the Center for Nanoscale Materials, a US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility, was supported by the US DOE, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, under contract no. DE-AC02-06CH11357. This work made use of the focused-ion-beam SEM core facility (RRID: SCR_025212) in the Department of Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago. J.J.d.P. acknowledges support from MICCoM, as part of the Computational Materials Sciences Program funded by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Sciences and Engineering Division, under grant number DOE/BES 5J-30161-0010A. P.G. acknowledges support from the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research (grant number FA9550-22-1-0209).
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited 2025.
PY - 2026/3
Y1 - 2026/3
N2 - Stretchable organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) are transforming human–machine interfaces and wearable technologies; still, their performance is considerably inferior to commercial, non-stretchable OLEDs, mainly limited by inefficient electron injection. We address this by redesigning both the electron transport layer and the cathode. For the former, we design a copolymer structure with high stretchability and ideal energy levels, achieving performance comparable with standard small-molecule electron transport layers. For the latter, we leverage the liquid metals embrittlement effect to confer stretchability to aluminium thin films, without compromising their electrical and optical characteristics. Combining these designs, we demonstrate fully stretchable OLEDs with a very high external quantum efficiency of 8% and a very low turn-on voltage of 3.5 V, which is on par with the reference rigid OLEDs utilizing the same emitter. This work tackles a crucial bottleneck in stretchable OLED development, bridging the performance gap between stretchable OLEDs and standard rigid OLEDs at the device level, paving the way for high-performance, skin-like displays.
AB - Stretchable organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) are transforming human–machine interfaces and wearable technologies; still, their performance is considerably inferior to commercial, non-stretchable OLEDs, mainly limited by inefficient electron injection. We address this by redesigning both the electron transport layer and the cathode. For the former, we design a copolymer structure with high stretchability and ideal energy levels, achieving performance comparable with standard small-molecule electron transport layers. For the latter, we leverage the liquid metals embrittlement effect to confer stretchability to aluminium thin films, without compromising their electrical and optical characteristics. Combining these designs, we demonstrate fully stretchable OLEDs with a very high external quantum efficiency of 8% and a very low turn-on voltage of 3.5 V, which is on par with the reference rigid OLEDs utilizing the same emitter. This work tackles a crucial bottleneck in stretchable OLED development, bridging the performance gap between stretchable OLEDs and standard rigid OLEDs at the device level, paving the way for high-performance, skin-like displays.
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/105023064237
UR - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41563-025-02419-z#Abs1
U2 - 10.1038/s41563-025-02419-z
DO - 10.1038/s41563-025-02419-z
M3 - Journal article
C2 - 41299070
AN - SCOPUS:105023064237
SN - 1476-1122
VL - 25
SP - 472
EP - 480
JO - Nature Materials
JF - Nature Materials
IS - 3
ER -
SDG 9 Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure