Abstract
Encapsulation is required since organic materials used in OLED devices are fragile to water vapor and oxygen. Laser sealing method is currently used where IR laser is scanned along the glass-frit coated lines. Laser method is, however, not suitable to encapsulating large-sized glass substrate due to the nature of sequential scanning. In this work we propose a new method of encapsulation using Joule heating. Conductive layer is patterned along the sealing lines on which the glass frit is screen printed and sintered. Electric field is then applied to the conductive layer resulting in bonding both the panel glass and the encapsulation glass by melting glass-frit. In order to obtain uniform bonding the temperature of a conductive layer having a shape of closed loop should be uniform. In this work we conducted simulation for heat distribution according to the structure of a conductive layer used as a Joule-heat source. Uniform temperature was obtained with an error of 5% by optimizing the structure of a conductive layer. Based on the results of thermal simulations we concluded that Joule-heating induced encapsulation would be a good candidate for encapsulation method especially for large area glass substrate.
