Study of thin calcium electrode degradation by ion beam analysis

Organic materials used in organic light emitting diodes (OLED) and organic solar cells are easily degraded under atmospheric conditions. Indeed, these devices require encapsulation with a barrier material which exhibits extremely low permeation rates for water vapour and oxygen. In order to determine these low permeation rates, the degradation of a metallic calcium layer encapsulated with the barrier material is usually monitored. However, the individual contributions of oxygen and water vapour to this degradation cannot be clearly distinguished. In this study, the corrosion of metallic calcium was investigated using isotopic markers in connection with ion beam analysis. We have shown that calcium reacts only with water at room temperature.