Synthesis and characterization of blue light-emitting poly(aryl ether)s containing pyrimidine-incorporated oligofluorene pendants with bipolar feature

Novel blue light-emitting poly(aryl ether)s comprising of bipolar oligofluorene pendants as chromophores have been designed and synthesized, in which pyrimidine and arylamine moieties are utilized as the electron acceptor and electron donor, respectively. Through varying π bridge length from monofluorene to bifluorene and end-cappers from hydrogen to carbazole and diphenylamine, the emission color of the resulting polymers covers from deep blue to greenish blue, and their HOMO and LUMO levels can be modulated to facilitate charge injection to improve the device performance. Polymer lightemitting diodes (PLEDs) are fabricated with the device structure of ITO/poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrene sulfonic acid) (PEDOT:PSS) (50 nm)/polymer (80 nm)/Ca (10 nm)/Al (200 nm). Among these polymers, P2Cz5F-Py with bifluorene bridge and carbazole end-capper shows excellent trade-off between the efficiency and emission wavelength, having a peak luminous efficiency as high as 1.26 cd/A and Commission Internationale de L’Eclairage (CIE) coordinates of (0.17, 0.17).