A hybrid encapsulation method for organic electronics

© 2009 American Institute of Physics. The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.3115144DOI: 10.1063/1.3115144We report a thin-film encapsulation method for organic electronics that combines the deposition of a layer of SiOₓ or SiNₓ (100 nm) by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition followed by a layer of Al₂O₃ (10–50 nm) by atomic layer deposition and a 1-μm-thick layer of parylene by chemical vapor deposition. The effective water vapor transmission rates of the encapsulation was (2±1) x 10 ⁻⁵ g/m² day at 20 °C and 50% relative humidity (RH). The encapsulation was integrated with pentacene/C ₆₀ solar cells, which showed no decrease in conversion efficiency after 5800 h of exposure to air demonstrating the effectiveness of the encapsulation methodology