Open‐Source Tools for the Fabrication and Characterization of Organic Electronics

Abstract

AbstractBy promoting collaborative sharing of knowledge, the open‐source movement has catalyzed substantial progress across diverse fields, including software development and artificial intelligence. Similarly, the concept of openly shared hardware has gained attention, due to its cost‐effectiveness and the prospect of improved reproducibility. A major motivation for the development of organic electronics is its promise to deliver substantial advantages in price and manufacturability relative to its inorganic counterpart. Here, two open‐source tools for organic electronics are introduced: a dip‐coating device designed for thin film fabrication and a four‐point probe for precisely measuring the resistance of thin films. These tools only cost a fraction of comparable commercial devices and run with open‐source software to ensure a user‐friendly experience. A case study demonstrates the optimization of simple fluorescent organic light‐emitting diodes (OLEDs) using these open‐source tools achieving 4% external quantum efficiency (EQE). To characterize these OLEDs, a previously reported open‐source setup for accurate efficiency measurements is used. A substantial software upgrade to this setup, which speeds up the characterization of electroluminescence, is also repor. This work contributes open‐source hardware and software to the field of organic electronics, thereby lowering the entrance barrier to the field and fostering the involvement of scientists with diverse scientific backgrounds.