In-situ fabricated hexagonal PDMS microsphere arrays for substrate-mode light extraction in blue fluorescent organic light emitting diodes

To inhibit the total reflection in the substrate-mode light loss of organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) and fully take advantage of the excellent light converging and out-coupling effect of the hexagonal array of microsphere, we in-situ fabricated the hexagonal array of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) microsphere onto the substrate of OLEDs via the porous template for substrate-mode light extraction. Firstly, regular honeycomb porous polystyrene (PS) template was prepared via a self-assembly “breath figure” process. The PS molecular weight, solvent, and humidity play an important role on the uniformity of pore distribution and pore diameter according to Young-Laplace equation. Based on the optimized porous PS template, the PDMS microsphere array was fabricated by pattern transferring, which indicates more prominent light diffraction than the flat PDMS film. Finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulation denotes that higher duty ratio of the PDMS microsphere array contributes to higher light out-coupling efficiency. Therefore, a PDMS microsphere array with larger duty ratio of 84.0% was applied in the extraction of external light for the blue fluorescent OLED device. The maximum luminance, current efficiency, and power efficiency are all improved, and the external quantum efficiency (EQE) is increased by 18.81% with spectral stability. • To inhibit the substrate-mode light loss of OLEDs, firstly porous template was fabricated via breath figure method. • To take advantage of the excellent light converging and out-coupling effect, the PDMS microsphere array was in-situ prepared from the porous template. • FDTD simulation denoted the PDMS microsphere array with a higher duty ratio could extract more light. • EL properties of the blue fluorescent OLED were all improved by using a PDMS microsphere array with duty ratio of 84.0%.