Conjugated polymer electroluminescence: technical aspects from basic devices to commercial products

Conjugated polymers have achieved much attention as light-emitting and charge transporting active layers in light-emitting polymer (LEP) devices. So far, the main focus of research and development in this area has been to improve device efficiency and to achieve different emission colours. For a successful commercialization of the technology, however, a variety of other aspects are equally great important. The dominant issues are device operating life and shelf life but other challenges arise in the areas of, for example, substrate conditioning, large scale coating of thin polymer layers and electrodes, encapsulation and environmental testing. This paper will address a selection of these engineering issues.