Khai Leok Chan

Synthesis of Light-Emitting Conjugated Polymers for Applications in Electroluminescent Devices

School of Chemistry, Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, 30 Flemington Road, Victoria 3010, Australia; School of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Nanyang Avenue, Republic of Singapore 639798; Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE) and the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), 3 Research Link, Singapore 117602; and F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., Pharmaceuticals Division, Discovery Chemistry, CH-4070 Basel, Switzerland

Synthesis of Host Polymers and Guests for Electrophosphorescence

Significant progress has been realized in the design and synthesis of light emitting polymers that emit over the entire visible spectrum. However, up to seventy-five percent of charge recombination events can lead to triplet states that decay non-radiatively. Following the pioneering work in the field of small molecule organic light emitting devices, it has been found that solution processible iridium polymer complexes can be used to harness the wasted triplet energy. In this paper, new results with respect to the electrophosphorescence of solution processible tethered iridium polymer derivatives are presented. Furthermore, our approaches to the design of new high triplet energy conjugated polymer hosts are also reported.

Synthesis of triplet emitters and hosts for electrophosphorescence

Electroluminescence from conjugated polymers can be significantly improved by harnessing the energy of their nonemissive triplet states. Poly(2,7-dibenzosilole) has been prepared and its triplet energy has been measured as 2.14 eV, a figure that is slightly higher than that of polyfluorene (2.09 eV). Two new tris-cyclometalated iridium complexes with blue-to-green emission properties have been prepared and characterized.

New Light Emitting Polymers and High Energy Hosts for Triplet Emission

This paper describes two aspects of research aimed at harnessing the triplet energy generated in electron-hole recombination in polymer electroluminescent devices. The purpose is to design solution-processible phosphorescent organometallic triplet emitters and to design high triplet energy polymer hosts that can transfer triplet energy to the phosphorescent guests. The method employed Suzuki cross coupling reactions to incorporate either phosphorescent cores or high energy triplet monomers covalently into polymer hosts to evaluate their optoelectronic properties. The results showed (i) efficient energy transfer from polyfluorene hosts to red phosphorescent guests and (ii) that pyridine and carbazole monomers could raise triplet energies of hosts. It is concluded that these approaches offer promise in the design of solution processible electrophosphorescent materials for red and green light emitting devices.