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
Sn.sup.2+-containing inorganic oxide material such as, for example, SnO,
SnO+P.sub.2O.sub.5 and SnO+BPO.sub.4.