Thin film encapsulated flexible organic electroluminescent displays

We describe encapsulated passive matrix, video rate organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays on flexible plastic substrates using a multilayer barrier encapsulation technology. The flexible OLED (FOLED(TM)) displays are based on highly efficient electrophosphorescent OLED (PHOLED(TM)) technology deposited on barrier coated plastic (Flexible Glass(TM) substrate) and are hermetically sealed with an optically transmissive multilayer barrier coating (Barix(TM) encapsulation). Preliminary lifetime to half initial luminance (L(0)similar to100 cd/m(2)) of order 200 h is achieved on the passive matrix driven encapsulated 80 dpi displays; 2500 h lifetime is achieved on a dc tested encapsulated 5 mm(2) FOLED test pixel. The encapsulated displays are flexed 1000 times around a 1 in. diameter cylinder and show minimal damage. (C) 2003 American Institute of Physics.