Characteristic Effects of Buffer Layers on Organic Light Emitting Devices

The stability and efficiency of organic light emitting devices are the most critical problems to be solved. The devices based on tris-8-(hydroxyquinoline) aluminum ($Alq_3$) and N,N-diphenyl-N,N-bis(3-methylphenyl)-1, 1-biphenyl-4,4-diamine (TPD) were used to study the effects of buffer layers on their characteristics. We have investigated the characteristic effects of CuPc (copper phthalocyanine) and pentacene buffer layers on the device characteristics, the (5${\sim}$20 nm thick) CuPc layers and the (10${\sim}$20 nm thick) pentacene layers were deposited. Efficiency was slightly improved and the turn-on voltages of the devices with the buffer layers were observed to have lower values than those of the devices without the buffer layers. It is believed that this result is attributed to the improvement of hole injection capability through the buffer layers into hole transport layer (HTL). We have also studied the atomic force microscopic images of the TPD layers deposited on the buffer layer and the bare ITO.