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Enabling efficient electron injection in stretchable OLED

Nature Materials volume 25, pages 472–480 (2026)Cite this article

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Abstract

Stretchable organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) are transforming human–machine interfaces and wearable technologies; still, their performance is considerably inferior to commercial, non-stretchable OLEDs, mainly limited by inefficient electron injection. We address this by redesigning both the electron transport layer and the cathode. For the former, we design a copolymer structure with high stretchability and ideal energy levels, achieving performance comparable with standard small-molecule electron transport layers. For the latter, we leverage the liquid metals embrittlement effect to confer stretchability to aluminium thin films, without compromising their electrical and optical characteristics. Combining these designs, we demonstrate fully stretchable OLEDs with a very high external quantum efficiency of 8% and a very low turn-on voltage of 3.5 V, which is on par with the reference rigid OLEDs utilizing the same emitter. This work tackles a crucial bottleneck in stretchable OLED development, bridging the performance gap between stretchable OLEDs and standard rigid OLEDs at the device level, paving the way for high-performance, skin-like displays.

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Fig. 1: Achieving efficient electron injection in stretchable OLEDs through designs of stretchable ETL polymers and stretchable cathode.
Fig. 2: Characterizations of stretchable ETL polymers with varied alkyl-chain molecular fractions.
Fig. 3: Stretchability of the ETL polymers.
Fig. 4: Stretchable cathode design based on the liquid-metal embrittlement effect on Al thin films.
Fig. 5: Fully stretchable OLED based on our stretchable ETL polymer (PTG75D) and embrittled Al cathode.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available within this Article and its Supplementary Information. Additional data are available from the corresponding authors upon request. Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability

The codes and force-field parameters used for the MD simulation are available via GitHub (https://github.com/czhangR/Enabling-efficient-electron-injection-in-intrinsically-stretchable-OLED). The Gaussian (https://gaussian.com/), LAMMPS (https://www.lammps.org/#gsc.tab=0) and GROMACS (https://www.gromacs.org/) packages are commercially available.

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Acknowledgements

This research is supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award number 2239618, and partially supported by the US National Institutes of Health (1DP2EB034563). This work, performed at the Center for Nanoscale Materials, a US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility, was supported by the US DOE, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, under contract no. DE-AC02-06CH11357. This work made use of the focused-ion-beam SEM core facility (RRID: SCR_025212) in the Department of Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago. J.J.d.P. acknowledges support from MICCoM, as part of the Computational Materials Sciences Program funded by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Sciences and Engineering Division, under grant number DOE/BES 5J-30161-0010A. P.G. acknowledges support from the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research (grant number FA9550-22-1-0209). We thank H. Wang and W. Lee for discussion of the new liquid metal AlGaIn. S. Wang is a CZ Biohub Investigator.

Author information

Author notes

  1. Wei Liu

    Present address: Institute of Functional Nano & Soft Materials (FUNSOM), Soochow University, Suzhou, China

  2. These authors contributed equally: Wei Liu, Cheng Zhang, Zhiming Zhang.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

    Wei Liu, Cheng Zhang, Zhiming Zhang, Yang Li, Shinya Wai, Yahao Dai, Glingna Wang, Naisong Shan, Songsong Li, Jie Xu, Juan J. de Pablo & Sihong Wang

  2. Nanoscience and Technology Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Lemont, IL, USA

    Aikaterini Vriza, Benjamin T. Diroll, Jie Xu & Sihong Wang

  3. Advanced Light Source, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Yunfei Wang & Chenhui Zhu

  4. Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    Du Chen & Peijun Guo

  5. Energy Sciences Institute, Yale University, West Haven, CT, USA

    Du Chen & Peijun Guo

  6. Center for Molecular Engineering, Argonne National Laboratory, Lemont, IL, USA

    Juan J. de Pablo & Sihong Wang

  7. CZ Biohub Chicago LLC, Chicago, IL, USA

    Sihong Wang

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Contributions

W.L. and S. Wang conceived the research. W.L. designed and carried out the experiments. Z.Z., Y.L., Y.D., G.W., N.S. and S.L. helped with the device fabrications and material characterizations. A.V. performed the DFT calculations. C. Zhang performed the MD simulation. S. Wai performed the SEM and EDS measurements. Y.W. and C. Zhu performed the GIWAXS characterizations. B.T.D. performed the photoluminescence transient decay measurements. D.C. and P.G. helped with the low-temperature phosphorescence measurement. S. Wang and J.J.d.P. supervised the research. W.L. and S. Wang wrote the manuscript. All authors contributed to the discussion and manuscript revision.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Juan J. de Pablo or Sihong Wang.

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Competing interests

S. Wang, J.J.d.P., W.L. and C. Zhang are inventors on a pending patent filed by the University of Chicago (number UCHI 25-T-179). The remaining authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature Materials thanks Jin Young Oh, Benjamin Tee and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Density functional theory (DFT) optimized structures, HOMO, and LUMO distributions for the repeating units of stretchable ETL polymers.

a, The molecular structure of the stretchable ETL polymers. The conjugated tri-repeating unit is in the blue dashed frame, while the non-conjugated repeating unit is in the red dashed frame. b, The optimized structure, HOMO, and LUMO distributions for the conjugated tri-repeating unit of the stretchable ETL polymers. c, The optimized structure, HOMO, and LUMO distributions for the non-conjugated repeating unit of the stretchable ETL polymers.

Extended Data Fig. 2 GIWAXS characterizations of the stretchable ETL-polymer films.

a-f, 2D GIWAXS patterns of the ETL-polymer films on 3-(trimethoxysilyl)propyl methacrylate (MPTS)-treated Si-substrates (Si-MPTS), and the substrate (Si-MPTS) alone. g-j, 1D linecuts in the out-of-plane direction and the in-plane direction of the ETL-polymer films on Si-MPTS substrates, and bare substrate (Si-MPTS) alone. The MPTS treatment on Si substrates was to facilitate film depositions.

Source data

Extended Data Fig. 3 Electron transporting properties of the ETL polymers.

a, Representative current density-voltage traces for electron-only devices based on the ETL polymers with the device structure of Al (80 nm)/ETL polymers/LiF (1 nm)/Al (80 nm). The film thicknesses of the ETL polymers are 80.4 nm, 95.5 nm, 91.1 nm, 84.5 nm, and 97.5 nm, respectively, for PTG, PTG25D, PTG50D, PTG75D, and PTGD. b, Representative electron mobilities of ETL polymers plotted as a function of the square root of the electric field. The electron mobility (μ) of the polymers is calculated based on the space charge-limited current (SCLC) model by the equation: \(J=\frac{9{\varepsilon }_{{\rm{r}}}{\varepsilon }_{0}\mu {V}^{2}}{8{d}^{3}}\) where εr is the relative dielectric constant, ε0 is the permittivity of free space, d is the thickness of ETL-polymer film, and V is the effective applied voltage in the device.

Source data

Extended Data Fig. 4 Analysis of the OLED performance based on the new stretchable ETL polymers in comparison with previously reported stretchable ETL.

a, Chemical structures of polymers PFN-Br and PEIE, the schematic of the energy-level alignment of PFN-Br_PEIE with EML (PDKCH), as well as the reasons for the poor performance of OLED based on PFN-Br_PEIE, such as triplet-exciton quenching via non-radiative decay due to the low T1 of PFN-Br_PEIE, and hole current leaking due to the slightly shallow HOMO of PFN-Br_PEIE (Supplementary Table 1). b, Chemical structures of small-molecule ETL materials TPBI and TmPyPB, the schematic of energy-level alignment of stretchable ETL polymers, TPBI, and TmPyPB with EML (PDKCH). c, Representative current density-voltage traces for the hole-only devices based on our representative ETL polymer (that is, PTG25D) and PEIE_PFN-Br, revealing the better hole blocking ability of our ETL polymers in comparison with that of the PEIE_PFN-Br composite. The architectures for the hole-only devices are ITO/PEDOT:PSS_PFI/PDKCH/ETL (PTG25D or PEIE_PFN-Br)/MoO3/Al.

Source data

Extended Data Fig. 5 Stretchability of five ETL polymers.

Optical microscopy images of ETL-polymer thin films stretched to the strains of 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100%, as well as released from 100% strain.

Extended Data Fig. 6

Sample preparation methodology used for characterizations of the embrittlement effect.

Extended Data Fig. 7 Stretchability of the embrittled Al film and the untreated Al film.

a–c, Optical microscopy images of an embrittled Al film (a) an untreated Al film (b) and a film with an interface between the embrittled Al and the untreated Al released from 100% strain (c).

Extended Data Fig. 8 Electron injections with different cathodes.

a, Representative J-V traces for the electron-only devices with different cathodes. The device structure is Al/SY/EIL/cathode. SY or super yellow, poly(1,4-phenylenevinylene) (PPV). b, Photoemission cutoffs obtained via UPS for Al, AgNW, and PEDOT:PSS samples, with and without the EIL modification. The device structures are ITO/our new ETL polymer or SY/EIL/cathode. The work functions of different cathodes are estimated from the UPS testing. The AgNW electrode is the same as the one we used as the anode for the fully stretchable OLED, the PEDOT:PSS electrode is based on a spin-coated film with a mix solution of PEDOT:PSS (PH 1000) with 6% of D-sorbitol.

Source data

Extended Data Fig. 9 Applicability of our designs to different color gamut.

a, Chemical structures of the blue emitter PTrz-tBuCz and the red emitter MEH-PPV. b, J-V, c, L-V traces, d, CIE coordinates, and e, spectra, of blue and red stretchable OLEDs with device structures of AgNW/PEDOT:PSS_PFI/EML (red or blue)/LiF/embrittled Al/AlGaIn. The structures of the control OLEDs are AgNW/PEDOT:PSS_PFI/EML/PEIE_PFN-Br/AgNW. PTrz-tBuCz is adopted from our earlier work1, MEH-PPV is purchased from Sigma-Aldrich.

Source data

Supplementary information

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Supplementary Figs. 1–37 and Tables 1 and 2.

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Liu, W., Zhang, C., Zhang, Z. et al. Enabling efficient electron injection in stretchable OLED. Nat. Mater. 25, 472–480 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-025-02419-z

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