Fluorene-fluorenone copolymer:: Stable and efficient yellow-emitting material for electroluminescent devices

We have synthesized and characterized a new fluorene copolymer exhibiting bright yellow luminescence. In order to ensure a complete pi-stacking of the active layer, a 9-fluorenone monomeric unit (FOne) has been used as comonomer in conjunction with the more classical 9,9-di-n-nonylfluorene unit. As expected with fluorene-based materials, when excited at 370 nm, the corresponding dilute copolymer solution photoluminescence spectra exhibit a main peak centered at 450 nm in the blue part of the visible spectrum. However, in the solid state, immediate structural reorganization of the layer occurs, leading to a red-shifted emission (bright yellow emission) centered at 550 nm. The origin of the emitted light has been attributed to excimers and/or aggregates based on short FOne segments and involves mainly exciton transfer between nonaggregated fluorene segments and aggregated ones. It is noteworthy that organic light-emitting devices based on these new materials exhibit no spectral evolution upon device operation. However, although stacking leads generally to a detrimental quenching of the luminescence in the solid state, as for regular poly(alkyl-fluorene), the luminescence efficiency of the fluorene-fluorenone copolymer remains suitable for device preparation. High material stability is attributed to an efficient and fast structural reorganization of the active layer, triggered by the small proportion of fluorenone. High electroluminescence efficiency, when compared to aggregated regular poly(alkyl-fluorene), results from an improved electron injection, a better carrier transport, and the conjunction of an efficient energy transfer from fluorene segments to excimers and/or aggregates with the implication of spin triplet, which is often lacking when using regular semiconducting polymers. (C) 2002 American Institute of Physics.