Sealing technique for decreasing the time it takes to hermetically seal a device and the resulting hermetically sealed device

Abstract

A sealing method for decreasing the time it takes to hermetically seal a device and the resulting hermetically sealed device (e.g., a hermetically sealed OLED device) are described herein. The sealing method includes the steps of: (1) cooling an un-encapsulated device; (2) depositing a sealing material over at least a portion of the cooled device to form an encapsulated device; and (3) heat treating the encapsulated device to form a hermetically sealed device. In one embodiment, the sealing material is a low liquidus temperature inorganic (LLT) material such as, for example, tin-fluorophosphate glass, tungsten-doped tin fluorophosphate glass, chalcogenide glass, tellurite glass, borate glass and phosphate glass. In another embodiment, the sealing material is a Sn2+-containing inorganic oxide material such as, for example, SnO, SnO+P2O5 and SnO+BPO4.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.