Novel Strategy for Photopatterning Emissive Polymer Brushes for Organic Light Emitting Diode Applications

A light-mediated methodology to grow patterned, emissive polymer brushes with micron feature resolution is reported and applied to organic light emitting diode (OLED) displays. Light is used for both initiator functionalization of indium tin oxide and subsequent atom transfer radical polymerization of methacrylate-based fluorescent and phosphorescent iridium monomers. The iridium centers play key roles in photocatalyzing and mediating polymer growth while also emitting light in the final OLED structure. The scope of the presented procedure enables the synthesis of a library of polymers with emissive colors spanning the visible spectrum where the dopant incorporation, position of brush growth, and brush thickness are readily controlled. The chain-ends of the polymer brushes remain intact, affording subsequent chain extension and formation of well-defined diblock architectures. This high level of structure and function control allows for the facile preparation of random ternary copolymers and red–green–blue arrays to yield white emission

Highly Photoluminescent Nonconjugated Polymers for Single-Layer Light Emitting Diodes

The design, synthesis, and characterization of solution-processable polymers for organic light emitting diode (OLED) applications are presented. Theoretical calculations were employed to identify a carbazole-pyrimidine based building block as an optimized host material for the emissive layer of an idealized OLED stack. Efficient, free radical homopolymerization and copolymerization with a novel methacrylate-based heteroleptic iridium­(III) complex leads to a library of nonconjugated polymers with pendant semiconductors. Optoelectronic characterization reveals impressive photoluminescence quantum yield (PLQY) values exceeding 80% and single-layer OLEDs show optimal performance for copolymers containing 6 mol % of iridium comonomer dopant