New OVPD System
(above) Prof. Forrest (center) surveys the new arrival with his students Richard Lunt (left) and Brian Lassiter (right).
Graduate students Brian Lassiter (left) and Richard Lunt (right) put their heads together to figure out how to assemble the new system.
The assembled OVDP system is shown above. Materials are stored in slides protruding from the right of the vertical insulated tube towards the rear of the system. Material is vaporized and transported through the horizontal tube to a substrate situated near the base of the insulation on the vertical tube at the front of the system. The stainless steel tube on the left connects the OVPD to other vacuum deposition systems so that samples can be transferred without exposure to air.
Overview
The OCM group has acquired a new organic vapor phase deposition (OVPD) system. This system is expected to become an in important tool for our ongoing research in OLEDs and organic photovoltaic devices. The OVPD system was custom fabricated for OCM by Angstrom Engineering. It is fully automated and can hold up to twelve different organic materials for thin film deposition. The OVPD chamber is connected to a glovebox and evaporation and sputtering tools to allow devices to be grown from start to finish without exposure to air.
OVPD is a process for growing thin films of organic semiconductors using material vaporized in the presence of an inert carrier gas. The material then re-condenses onto a substrate. The properties of films grown using OVPD can be tailored for a variety of applications by controlling the pressure and temperature at which growth occurs. OVPD was developed by the OCM group and has been central to our research efforts for the last decade. Previous work was done using smaller bench scale systems. This new system builds on the experience gained from these earlier systems. It marks an important step in the evolution of the OVPD technique. The new system will be more user-friendly and less operator dependent than previous systems, making it a more broadly applicable research tool. It will also help to bridge the gap between research scale and production scale growth of devices by OVPD.
