Screen printed aluminum cathode for flexible devices

All-printed electronic devices are rapidly emerging due to its great potential for large area, flexible and low cost products such as organic light-emitting diodes (OLED) and organic photovoltaic (OPV). Aluminum (A1) electrodes are widely used in these devices as the cathode due to the high conductivity and matched work function with organic active materials. In this study, A1H3 {0 (C2H5)2} was used as the A1 precursor ink and TiCl4 as the catalyst to pattern Al electrodes by screen printing. The printed Al films, which were sintered at low temperature of 80 °C, have excellent electrical conductivity, mechanical flexibility and high stability, and are almost the same as those deposited by vacuum thermal evaporation. The work function of Al thin film prepared by screen printing is about 3.72eV and well suited as cathodes, which paves the way for development of all-printed flexible OLEDs and OPV devices.