Fibertronic Organic Light-Emitting Diodes toward Fully Addressable, Environmentally Robust, Wearable Displays

Abstract

Significant potential of electronic textiles for wearable applications has triggered active studies of luminescent fibers toward smart textile displays. In spite of notable breakthroughs in the lighting fiber technology, a class of information displays with a luminescent fiber network is still underdeveloped due to several formidable challenges such as limited electroluminescence fiber performance, acute vulnerability to chemical and mechanical factors, and lack of decent engineering schemes to form fibers with robust interconnectable pixels for two-dimensional matrix addressing. Here, we present a highly feasible strategy for organic light-emitting diode (OLED) fiber-based textile displays that can overcome these issues by implementing prominent solution options including compatible fabrication method of OLED pixel arrays on adapted fiber configurations and chemically/mechanically sturdy but electrically conductive passivation system. To create solid interconnectable OLED fibers without compromising the high electroluminescence performance, phosphorescence OLED materials are deposited onto process-friendly fibers of rectangular stripes, where periodically patterned OLED pixels are selectively passivated with robust polymer and circumventing metal pads by a stamp-assisted printing method. A woven textile of interlaced interconnectable OLED fibers with perpendicularly arranged conductive fibers serves as a matrix-addressable two-dimensional network that can be operated by the passive matrix scheme. Successful demonstrations of stably working woven OLED textile in the water, as well as under the applied tensile force, support feasibility of the present approach to reify fully addressable, environmentally durable, fiber-based textile displays.