Biosubstrates Obtained from Gellan Gum for Organic Light-Emitting Diodes

Abstract

Nowadays, flexible organic electronics are under intense investigation for environmentally friendly and biocompatible applications. One of the main components of electronic devices is the substrate, which gives support for building devices. There is great interest in the scientific community for the development of biocompatible and biodegradable substrates for the manufacture of these kinds of devices, aiming at technological and medical applications. In this work, we produced a flexible and transparent biosubstrate based on a gellan gum polymer by a solvent casting method to manufacture flexible organic light-emitting diodes (FOLEDs). The gellan substrate exhibited optical transparency of about 78% at 550 nm and 80% at 900 nm. In addition, the optimized indium tin oxide (ITO)/SiO2-coated gellan substrate exhibited a resistivity of 2.8 × 10–4 Ω·cm and a sheet resistance of 11.2 Ω/sq. These values are better or equal to those found in the literature for similar biosubstrates. Finally, the fabricated FOLEDs exhibited a maximum luminance of about 2327 cd/m2 and the current efficiency reached a maximum value of 2.9 cd/A. These characteristics reveal that this biosubstrate has interesting potential for applications in flexible green electronics, mainly due to its biocompatible properties and the results obtained by the developed FOLEDs.

Laponite-Modified Biopolymers as a Conformable Substrate for Optoelectronic Devices

“…For polymeric films, elastic deformation occurs at sufficient low stress, causing the unfolding and alignment of chains, resulting in reversive changes of intermolecular forces. Accordingly, a small Young’s modulus is expected for substrates with elevated susceptibility to deformation . As follows, the HA polymer has an ultimate tensile strength (UTS) of 277.2 MPa, an elongation at break (EAB) of 30.9%, and Young’s modulus (YM) of 56.1 ± 1.7 MPa.…”

Review of Bacterial Nanocellulose as Suitable Substrate for Conformable and Flexible Organic Light-Emitting Diodes

“…Moreover, biopolymers are biodegradable (which contributes to the reduction in environmental electronic pollution) and are biocompatible, which provides potential applications in the biomedical field. Substrates based on BNC [ 36 , 37 , 38 ], silk fibroin [ 39 , 40 , 41 ], Allium cepa L. [ 42 ], and gellan gum [ 43 ] have been reported in the literature for the construction of organic optoelectronic devices. In these works, the use of deposition techniques by thermal evaporation, sputtering, electron beam, and spin-coating has been very recurrent.…”

Sustainable Macromolecular Materials in Flexible Electronics

“…The substrate used in the pharmaceutical industry has been transferred to OLED technology by the solvent casting method. [ 127 ]…”

“…The substrate used in the pharmaceutical industry has been transferred to OLED technology by the solvent casting method. [127] Most of the resins, which can be extracted from plants such as amber, balsam, copal, etc., are highly viscous liquids and uncommonly found in the solid state. The main reason why the resins have been secreted by a plant is to protect itself from potential dangers such as insects and pathogens.…”