New Electroactive Polymers with Electronically Isolated 4,7-Diarylfluorene Chromophores as Positive Charge Transporting Layer Materials for OLEDs

The OLED materials were developed in the frame of project funded by the Research Council of Lithuania (grant No. S-LLT-19-2). B.Z. is thankful to the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51773195), and the Research & Development Projects in Key Areas of Guangdong Province, China (No. 2019B010933001). We are also obliged to D. Volyniuk for measurements of the ionization potentials.A group of polyethers containing electroactive pendent 4,7-diarylfluorene chromophores have been prepared by the multi-step synthetic route. Full characterization of their structures has been presented. The polymeric materials represent derivatives of high thermal stability with initial thermal degradation temperatures in a range of 392–397 °C. Glass transition temperatures of the amorphous polymers range from 28 °C to 63 °C and depend on structures of the 4,7-diarylfluorene chromophores. Electron photoemission spectra of thin layers of the electroactive derivatives showed ionization potentials in the range of 5.8–6.0 eV. Hole injecting/transporting properties of the prepared polymeric materials were confirmed during formation of organic light-emitting diodes with tris(quinolin-8-olato)aluminium (Alq3) as a green emitter, which also serves as an electron transporting layer. The device using hole-transporting polymer with electronically isolated 2,7-di(4-biphenyl) fluorene chromophores demonstrated the best overall performance with low turn on voltage of 3 V, high current efficiency exceeding 1.7 cd/A, and with maximum brightness over 200 cd/m2. The organic light-emitting diode (OLED) characteristics were measured in non-optimized test devices. The efficiencies could be further improved by an optimization of device structure, formation conditions, and encapsulation of the devices..---//---This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 license.Research Council of Lithuania (grant No. S-LLT-19-2); National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51773195); Research & Development Projects in Key Areas of Guangdong Province, China (No. 2019B010933001); Institute of Solid State Physics, University of Latvia as the Center of Excellence has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Framework Programme H2020-WIDESPREAD-01-2016-2017-TeamingPhase2 under grant agreement No. 739508, project CAMART