Bright-white light-emitting devices based on a single polymer exhibiting simultaneous blue, green, and red emissions

We have developed efficient white-light-emitting polymers through the incorporation of low band gap green-light-emitting benzothiadiazole and red-light-emitting bisthiophenylbenzothiadiazole moieties into the backbone of a blue-light-emitting bipolar polyfluorene copolymer. Partial energy transfer from the blue-fluorescent polyfluorene backbone to the green- and red-fluorescent components resulted in individual emissions from the three emissive species. By carefully controlling the concentrations of the low-energy-emitting species in the resulting copolymers, the emission of white light, with contributions from each of the three primary colors, was achieved. Efficient polymer light-emitting devices prepared using these copolymers exhibited luminance efficiencies as high as 4.87 cd/A with color coordinates (0.37, 0.36) that were very close to the ideal CIE chromaticity coordinates for pure white light (0.33, 0.33). In addition, the color coordinates remained almost unchanged over a range of operating potentials. A mechanistic study suggested that energy transfer from the fluorene segments to the low band gap units, rather than charge trapping, was the main operating process involved in the electroluminescent process.