A Novel Nucleation Inducer for Ultrathin Au Anodes in High Efficiency and Flexible Organic Optoelectronic Devices

Methyl-terminated alucone films are prepared as a nucleation inducer by molecular layer deposition (MLD), increasing the surface free energy (SFE) to help the nucleation of Au electrodes. By controlling the surface groups of MLD alucone, the SFE of the films reach 93.8 dyne cm(-1), which is significantly larger than the 75.94 dyne cm(-1) of commonly used wetting layer ZnS. As a result, Au films deposited on this novel nucleation inducer show a layered growth at a thickness of 5 nm, and thus exhibit high photoelectric performance and a bending life of more than 1500 times. When this high-performance electrode is applied in organic optoelectronic devices, current efficiency enhancement of 24.4% and 12.7% are achieved in organic light-emitting devices (OLEDs) and flexible perovskite light-emitting devices (PLEDs), respectively. Also, the flexible PLED maintains 96.4% of the initial luminance after 1000 bends.