of a UV-Curable co-Polyacrylate/Silica
Nanocomposite as a Transparent
Encapsulation Resin for Device Packaging
Yu-Young Wang, Tsung-Eong Hsieh*
Introduction
The UV-curable adhesive resins have been widely applied to the encapsulation of optoelectronic devices.[1–3] In
particular, they are the key materials for the packaging of modern flat panel displays (FPDs) such as organic light-emitting devices (OLEDs) since the sealing processes utilizing thermal-curable resins are incompatible to the light-emitting material and high reactivity cathode electrode of OLEDs. Recent development of advanced OLEDs such as top-emitting and flexible OLEDs requires direct encapsulation methods such that the sealing resin is dispensed all over the devices.[4–6] Preparation and characterizations of transparent, UV-curable sealing resins
Electrical properties of UV-curable co-polyacrylate/silica nanocomposite resins prepared via
sol-gel process for device encapsulation were investigated. It was found that, by appropriate
UV curing process and the formation of nanoscale silica particles finely dispersed in the resin
matrix, the leakage current density of the nanocomposite resin films decreases from 235 to
1.3 nA cm
2at the applied electrical field of 10 kV cm
1. The silica nanoparticles also
restricted the motions of polar functional groups in organic matrix that the nanocomposite
films with satisfactory dielectric properties [dielectric constant (e) ¼ 3.93 and tangent loss
(tand ¼ 0.0472) could be obtained. Chemical structure analyses revealed that excessive UV
curing results in photooxidation and/or photodegradation in resin samples, leading to the
polar groups and ionic/radical segments in
organic matrix as well as the –Si–O–Si– structure
in the vicinity of silica nanoparticles. These
organic/inorganic functional groups generated
more permeation paths for charge carrier
migration and hence deteriorated the electrical
properties of the nanocomposite samples. Though
post-baking treatment at 80 8C for 1 h followed by
UV curing improved the rigidity of the resin
sample, it brought the polar functional groups
closer to each other and similarly degraded
elec-trical properties of the nanocomposite resins.
Y.-Y. Wang, T.-E. Hsieh
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, National Chiao-Tung University, 1001 Ta Hsueh Road, Hsinchu 30050, Taiwan, R. O. C.
applied to the packaging of advanced OLEDs hence attract a lot of research interests.[7,8]
Satisfactory electrical properties, e.g., low leakage current density, low dielectric constant (e), and dielectric loss (tand), are crucial to the sealing resins for direct encapsulation in order to enhance the device performance and reduce the power consumption. However, it is well known that the UV curing conditions affect the physical properties of encapsulation resins.[9–11]Inappropriate UV
curing deteriorates the mechanical properties[12] and electrical properties[13,14]of polymeric resins. In the pre-vious studies, we reported the preparation and property characterizations of transparent, UV-curable co-polyacrylate/ silica nanocomposite resins[15]and it has been successfully applied to the direct encapsulation of a bottom-emitting OLED.[16]In this work, a systematic study on the effects of UV curing and post-baking treatments on the electrical properties of such a nanocomposite sealing resins is presented. Experimental results revealed a substantial improvement on the electrical insulation and dielectric properties when silica nanoparticles were formed in co-polyacrylate resin matrix via sol-gel process. With appropriate UV curing, the nanocomposite resin film possessing relatively low leakage current density ¼ 1.3 nA cm2, e ¼ 3.93, and tand ¼ 0.0472 could be achieved. However, UV curing with excessive energy density and subsequent post-baking treatment at 80 8C for 1 h were found to degrade the electrical properties of the resin samples. Characterizations of the structural changes and organic/inorganic interfacial interactions were carried out in this work in order to clarify the effects of curing conditions on microstructure and electrical properties of the oligomer resin and nanocomposite resin samples. Degradation mechanisms deduced from the above ana-lyses were also proposed.
Experimental Part
Preparation of the Nanocomposite Resin
The UV-curable co-polyacrylate/silica nanocomposite resin was prepared via in situ sol-gel process and its preparation and property characterizations were reported elsewhere.[15] The ingredients of nanocomposite resins were the oligomer (bisphenol A epoxy diacrylate, see Figure 1 for its chemical structure) purchased from Sartomer Co., the radical photopolymerization
initiator (1-hydroxycyclohexylphenyl ketone) obtained from Chembridge International Co., acrylic acid and tetraethyl ortho-silica (TEOS) purchased from Aldrich Chemicals Co. Preparation of nanocomposite resin is briefly described as follows. First, TEOS and appropriate amount of acrylic acid were sequentially added into a three-necked flask containing oligomer heated at 80 8C. The whole mixture was stirred constantly for 24 h to ignite the in situ sol-gel reaction and the H2O molecules necessary for hydrolysis reaction
were acquired from the moisture in the ambient at about 60% RH. The composition of nanocomposite resin sample is listed in Table 1. After the completion of sol-gel reaction, about 5.0 wt.-% of photoinitiator was added into the above mixture and the stirring was followed to complete the preparation of UV-curable nanocomposite resin samples. A representative microstructure of UV-cured nanocomposite resin obtained by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) is shown in Figure 2.
Property Characterizations
The metal-insulator-metal (MIM) structure was prepared for the electrical property measurements by first coating Al on Si wafer to serve as the bottom electrode. The oligomer and nanocomposite resins were then respectively coated on the Al-coated wafer substrates by using a doctor-blade system. Subsequent photo-polymerization of the resins was carried out in a UV oven (CL-1000, UVP) in which the UV irradiation comes from an array of five 8 W dual bipin discharge tubes emitting UV light within the wavelength range of 315–340 nm in air ambient. The UV exposure energy density was set at three different levels, 4.75, 9.5, and 19.0 J cm2, in order to investigate the effects of curing energy
density on electrical properties of resin samples. The temperature inside the UV oven was below 50 8C during UV curing. After UV curing, parts of the samples were further subjected to a post-baking treatment at 80 8C for 1 h. The top electrode consisting of Ti, Cu, and Au was then deposited on all cured samples to form the MIM structure for subsequent electrical measurements. The breakdown voltage and leaking current density of all samples were evaluated by using an HP 4156B semiconductor parameter Figure 1. Chemical structure of the oligomer resin serving as the major component in the co-polyacrylate/silica nanocomposite resin.
Table 1. Ingredients of nanocomposite sample.
Sample designation Oligomer/acrylic acid/TEOSa) mol-%
Nanocomposite 25.15: 31.40: 43.45
a)The inorganic content in nanocomposite identified via TGA was
analyzer in conjunction with a probe station. The dielectric properties of samples, e and tand, were measured by a C-V system (Keithley, 82-DOS) or an HP 4194A impedance analyzer operating at a frequency of 1 MHz.
The glass transition temperature (Tg) and viscoelastic
proper-ties of UV-cured nanocomposite resin were evaluated by a dynamic mechanical analyzer (TA2980, DMA) at a heating rate of 5 8C min1and a frequency of 1 Hz. Thermogravimetric analyzer (TA-Q500, TGA) was utilized to identify the 5.0% weight loss temperature (T5%WL) of the oligomer and nanocomposite resins
cured at different UV curing energy densities. The TGA data were also transformed to plot the derivative thermogravimetry (DTG) curves. The chemical structures of UV-cured specimens about 60 mm in thickness were analyzed by a Fourier transform infrared spectrometer (Nicolet Prote´ge´ 460) in the wave number range of 400–4 000 cm1. The chemical structures of nanosilica particles in
nanocomposite resins were also identified by a Varian UnityInova 500 NMR.
Results and Discussion
Electrical Properties
The leakage current densities of the oligomer and nanocomposite resin films subjected to various UV curing energy densities without post-baking treatment were presented in Figure 3. In the measured voltages ranging from 0 to 100 V, no obvious electrical breakdown was observed in all samples. All resin specimens cured at low UV energy density possess low leakage current densities and, the leakage current density increases with the increase in UV curing energy density. For instance, as shown in Figure 3, at the applied field of 10 kV cm1
the oligomer and nanocomposite resin films cured at 4.75 J cm2, respectively possess low leakage current densities about 235 and 1.3 nA cm2while the same resin samples exhibit high leakage current densities about 966 and 371 nA cm2 after being UV-cured at 19 J cm2. Leakage current density measurement indicated that the embedment of nanosilica particles in resin matrix bene-fited the electrical insulation and hence the nanocompo-site film comprised of a much lower leakage current density than that of the oligomer film cured at the same UV curing energy density. Further, the leakage current density increases with the increase in UV curing energy density regardless of the resin sample type.
The lower leakage current density of nanocomposite resins is attributed to the formation of fine-dispersed nanoscale silica particles in the resin matrix. Those intercalated inorganic particles suppress the migration of charge carriers through resin matrix and hence improve the electrical properties. Since high UV irradiation affects the molecular structure of polymeric resins,[17] deteriora-tion of electrical properties of resin samples presented above was attributed to structural changes in the organic portion of samples. Relating characterizations to identify the structural change and degradation mechanism of resin samples are described in the following sections.
Figure 4 presents the effects of post-baking treatment on the electrical insulation of nanocomposite resins; never-theless, such a thermal treatment deteriorates the electri-cal properties of samples. For instance, post-baking treatment raises the leakage current density from 1.3 to 45.7 nA cm2at the applied field of 10 kV cm1for the nanocomposite sample cured at 4.75 J cm2.
Figure 2. TEM micrograph of the nanocomposite resin prepared in this work.
Figure 3. Leakage current density versus electrical field of oligo-mer cured at 4.75 J cm2( ), 9.5 J cm2( ), 19.0 J cm2( ) and nanocomposite resins cured at 4.75 J cm2( ), 9.5 J cm2( ), 19.0 J cm2( ), respectively.
Dielectric properties (e and tand) of the oligomer and nanocomposite samples possessing the lowest leakage current densities (i.e., cured at 4.75 J cm2) were also measured and the results were presented in Table 2. It can be seen that the nanocomposite sample possesses smaller e and tan d in comparison with the oligomer resin. The values of e and tan d for nanocomposite sample cured at 4.75 J cm2 are, respectively 3.93 and 0.0472, which are
lower than 8.71 and 0.0713 of the oligomer resin cured at the same UV energy density. This indicates that the for-mation of nanosized silica particles in the co-polyacrylate resin matrix also benefits the dielectric properties. Further, all samples subjected to the post-baking exhibit higher e and tand. Such a thermal treatment hence could not im-prove the electrical properties of the nanocomposite resins prepared in this work.
Chemical Structure and Thermal Analyses and Their Relationships to Electrical Properties
Figure 5(a) and (b) respectively depict the FTIR spectra of the oligomer and nanocomposite resins cured at different
UV energy densities. During FTIR characterization, nitro-gen gas was purged into the sample chamber to eliminate the interferences resulting from CO2, CO, and H2O in the
ambient. As shown in Figure 5(a), continuous rise of functional bands absorbance, for examples, 3 460 cm1(s, OH), 1 730 cm1 (vs, C––O), and 1 180 cm1 (s, C–O),
indicates amplification of oxidized structures in the oligomer chains as a function of the UV curing energy density. In order to preciously identify the occurrence of photooxidation during UV exposure, the relative absor-bance ratios of the above functional groups to –C–H in benzene for each of the spectra were calculated and the results are listed in Table 3. The difference of ratios in oligomer samples indicates the occurrence of photooxida-tion. For example, the ratio of –C––O in UV-cured oligomer chains increases with the curing energy densities, e.g.,
Figure 4. Leakage current density versus electrical field of nano-composite resins cured at 4.75 J cm2( ), 4.75 J cm2( ) with post-baking, 9.5 J cm2 ( ), 9.5 J cm2 ( ) with post-baking, 19.0 J cm2 ( ), and 19.0 J cm2 ( ) with post-baking.
Table 2. Dielectric properties of resin samples cured at 4.75 J cm2.
Resin Post-baking e tand Oligomer No 8.71 0.0713
Yes 9.35 0.0815 Nanocomposite No 3.93 0.0472 Yes 5.28 0.0548
Figure 5. FTIR spectra of (a) the oligomer and (b) the co-polyacrylate/silica nanocomposite resins cured at 4.75 ( ), 9.5 ( ), and 19.0 ( ) J cm2.
2.95 for 4.75 J cm2-cured oligomer and 3.64 for
19 J cm2-cured oligomer. It is known that the UV irradiation results in crosslinking during the polymerization of the resin; however, excessive UV exposure causes either photooxidation and/or photodegradation of the polymer by inducing the scission of chemical bonds in polymeric chains.[17–19]The FTIR characterization of oligomer resins subjected to high UV curing energy density presented above clearly confirmed the occurrence of photooxidation in the resin matrix.
In accordance with the absorbance ratio increments of –C–O–, –C––O, and –O–H in UV-cured nanocomposite samples listed in Table 3, photooxidation similarly occurred in nanocomposite resins. Further, as indicated by the degradation of thermal stability shown by TGA analysis, photodegradation induced by the scission of short polymer chains also occurs in nanocomposite resins. Table 4 lists the T5%WLof the oligomer and nanocomposite
resins subjected to various UV curing energy densities and Figure 6 presents the DTG analysis of nanocomposite resins. For the oligomer resin, a relatively small T5%WL
decrease indicates that the UV curing energy density has very little influence on its thermal stability. Nevertheless, significant deterioration of thermal stability was observed in the nanocomposite specimens subjected to UV curing at high energy density, e.g., the T5%WLdecreased from 175.9 to
161.7 8C when UV curing energy density was raised from 4.75 to 19 J cm2. Owing to the existence of newly formed small molecules such as ethyl acrylate or acrylic anhydride
in nanocomposite resin,[15]the DTG curves of
nanocom-posite resin consist of one major peak at about 430 C and one broad peak at around 190 C as shown in Figure 6(a). The continuous decline in derivative weight of the major density for oligomer density for nanocomposite
J cmS2 J cmS2 4.75 9.5 19 4.75 9.5 19 –C–O–/–C–H in benzene 3.35 3.61 3.83 2.39 8.17 13.13 –C––O/–C–H in benzene 2.95 3.28 3.64 2.40 7.84 12.55 –O–H/–C–H in benzene 0.67 0.88 1.05 1.49 2.36 3.23 –Si–O–Si–/–C–H in benzene – – – 2.36 8.30 12.58
Table 4.T5%WLof oligomer and nanocomposite resins obtained by
TGA.
Curing condition Oligomer Nanocomposite J cmS2
-C -C UV-cured at 4.75 232.2 175.9 UV-cured at 9.5 231.5 169.1 UV-cured at 19 229.9 161.7
Figure 6. DTG results of (a) the co-polyacrylate/silica nano-composite resins cured at 4.75 ( ), 9.5 ( ), and 19.0 ( ) J cm2and (b) enlargement of portion in (a).
peak indicated that the short side chains in the UV-crosslinked co-polyacrylate structure degrades into radical/ ionic polymeric segments by the breakage of chemical bonds during UV exposure.[15,17] A noticeable feature in Figure 5 and Table 3 is the emergence of 1 090 cm1 (s, Si–O–Si) for the nanocomposite resins when UV curing energy density becomes high. It can also be seen that the absorbance ratio of this peak increases with the increase in UV curing energy density. This likely resulted from the sol–gel reaction of –O–CH2CH3and –OH groups capped on
nanosilica particles, as revealed by NMR characterization shown in Figure 7.[20]Consequently, excessive UV curing
induced the photooxidation and generated the radical/ ionic segments in organic matrix and –Si–O–Si– structure in the vicinity of silica particles. Finally, we note that the post-baking treatment barely affects the chemical struc-tures of resin samples in accordance with the highly similar spectra obtained prior to and posterior to the thermal treatment.
It is known that polar groups in polymers may absorb moisture molecules in ambient and establish permeation paths in the organic portion. As revealed by the above chemical structure analyses, excessive UV exposure induc-ed more polar groups and hence more moisture molecules trapped in the resin matrix. When an external bias was applied, the charge carriers might migrate along these newly established permeation paths and thereby raised the leakage current in the resin samples subjected to excessive UV curing. Furthermore, photodegradation generated radical/ionic segments in the nanocomposite resins. This builds up additional permeation paths in the samples and exasperates the charge carrier migration in the excessively cured nanocomposite resin samples. A dramatic increase in the leakage current density was hence observed in the nanocomposite sample cured by 19 J cm2.
The purposes of post-baking treatment are to terminate the photoreaction process and enhance the structure rigidity of polymeric resins. It seems such a thermal treatment should improve the electrical properties; how-ever, the data presented in the previous section show an opposite result. It was speculated that the post-baking treatment carried out in this work may bring the oxidized groups and radical/ionic segments resulted from excessive UV curing much closer to each other. This increase in the molecule packing reduces the hopping distance of charge migration, which, in turn, results in an increase in the leakage current in nanocomposite resins subjected to post-baking treatment.
Relationship between Electrical Properties and Inorganic Particles/Polymeric Chains Interaction via Dynamic Mechanical Analysis
Dissipation factor obtained via DMA is very sensitive to the structure transformation of polymers, the intensity profile and peak position of the dissipation factor are commonly adopted to explore the behaviors of polymeric chains. In order to investigate the interactions between inorganic particles and polymeric chains in nanocompo-site resin samples, we prepared the resin samples cured at a unique energy density of 6 J cm2 for DMA study. Figure 8 presents the dissipation factors obtained by DMA for oligomer and nanocomposite resin samples. It reveals that the Tg of the nanocomposite resin is higher than
that of the oligomer resin by about 20 8C and the nano-composite resin possesses a smaller dissipation factor. The improvements in the above mentioned physical properties resulted from the intercalation of silica nanoparticles embedded in co-polyacrylate resin. Furthermore, according to the study on PMMA-SiO2nanocomposite,[21]cladding of
Figure 7.29Si NMR spectra of this nanocomposite resin.
Figure 8. Dissipation factors obtained via DMA for oligomer and co-polyacrylate/silica nanocomposite resin UV-cured at 6 J cm2. The temperatures specified in the plot are the Tg’s of samples.
previous section clearly illustrated the capping of –O– CH2CH3, –OH, and –Si–O–Si– groups on silica
nanoparti-cles. Similarly, the frictions between these organic/ inorganic functional groups and polymer chains might restrict the mobility of the co-polyacrylate chains and provide a certain contribution to the improvements on Tg
and dissipation factor of nanocomposite resins. In addi-tion, the frictions between organic and inorganic portions should be able to inhibit the movements of polar groups in co-polyacrylate chains so as to suppress the polarization in nanocomposite resins when external bias was applied. The less the polarization, the less the total electric energy consumed by the dipole motions in nanocomposite resins. Consequently, relatively low values of e and tand were observed in nanocomposite resin in comparison with oligomer resin.
Conclusion
In this work, the electrical properties of transparent, UV-curable co-polyacrylate/silica nanocomposite resins prepared by in situ sol-gel process were investigated. Experimental results revealed that the embedment of nano-scale silica particles in organic matrix effectively improves the electrical properties of resin samples. The intercalation of inorganic particles effectively inhibited the migration of charge carriers thus reducing the leakage current density of nanocomposite resin samples. Furthermore, the fric-tions were generated between the organic/inorganic function groups such as –O–CH2CH3, –OH, and –Si–O–
Si– groups capping on silica nano-particles and the co-polyacrylate chains. This restricted the chain mobility and improved the dielectric properties of nanocomposite resin samples. With appropriate UV curing process, the nanocomposite resin with satisfactory electrical properties (leakage current density ¼ 1.3 nA cm2; e ¼ 3.93; tand ¼ 0.0472) were achieved in this work.
Experimental analyses also found that excessive UV curing results in photooxidation and/or photodegradation in the resin samples. This implied the formation of polar groups and ionic/radical segments in organic matrix and the –Si–O–Si– structure in the vicinity of silica nanopar-ticles. These organic/inorganic functional groups estab-lished additional permeation paths for charge carrier migration and raised the leakage current in the samples. Electrical properties of resin samples hence deteriorated. Though post-baking treatment may terminate the photo-reaction process and provide a more rigid structure for resin samples, it brought the polar functional groups in the
properties of nanocomposite resin samples.
Acknowledgements: This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of China with the Academic Center of Excellence in ‘‘Semiconducting Polymers and Organic Molecules for Electroluminance’’ under contract no. 91-E-FA04-2-4.
Received: April 24, 2007; Revised: July 22, 2007; Accepted: July 25, 2007; DOI: 10.1002/macp.200700229
Keywords: dielectric properties; microstructure; nanocompo-sites; photopolymerization
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