Synthesis and characterization of a polyfluorene containing carbazole and oxadiazole dipolar pendent groups and its application to electroluminescent devices

We have synthesized a blue-light-emitting polyfluorene (PF) derivative (PF-CBZ-OXD) that presents bulky hole-transporting carbazole and electron-transporting oxadiazole pendent groups functionalized at the C-9 positions of alternating fluorene units. The results from photoluminescence and electrochemical measurements indicate that both the side chains and the PF main chain retain their own electronic characteristics in the copolymer. An electroluminescent device incorporating this polymer as the emitting layer was turned on at 4.5 V; it exhibited a stable blue emission with a maximum external quantum efficiency of 1.1%. Moreover, we doped PF-CBZ-OXD and its analogue PF-TPA-OXD with a red-light-emitting iridium phosphor for use as components of phosphorescent red-light emitters to investigate the effect of the host's HOMO energy level on the degree of charge trapping and on the electrophosphorescent efficiency. We found that spectral overlap and individual energy level matching between the host and guest were both crucial features affecting the performance of the electroluminescence devices. Atomic force microscopy measurements indicated that the dipolar nature of PF-CBZ-OXD, in contrast to the general nonpolarity of polydialkylfluorenes, provided a stabilizing environment that allowed homogeneous dispersion of the polar iridium triplet dopant. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part A: Polym Chem 45: 2925–2937, 2007